The Good Man
by Delphinbella
Summary: Rebecca Baine has always rebelled against the Gunslinger's Council, but when she finds herself pushed through a door and into the stronghold of the Crimson King she has to choose between the life she's always known, and the opportunity to change the world
1. Chapter 1

The Good Man

They had made her relinquish her guns in some dusty town in some other world. She put up a fight, but the Tet told her to just give them over and retrieve them in the morning. She had no badge to prove she could carry them, and that was how it all started.

Rebecca was feeling fine after a good bar fight in which she won. She stepped out onto the street of the dusty, new gold-mining town and found herself face to face with sixteen illegal guns in the hands of eight taheens. Five of them were birds, three were rodents; it was the yellow one she should have concerned herself with.

A fight broke out between the taheens and the Tet, and Rebecca was grabbed. Lane had gotten a gun from a now-dead rodent and turned to see the yellow bird snatch her towards a doorway. His shot rang true and the bird died on the way through, the door slamming shut behind them both. Rebecca grabbed the yellow taheen's gun and rolled to the side, barrel aimed at his head for a full two minutes before she decided it was safe to get up, kick him in the side, and put a bullet through his head for good measure.

And so, Rebecca found herself back in her own world - she could tell just by the feel of it - standing over a taheen in the middle of a dry field with a lone door behind her.

Holstering her new gun, which fit oddly in the holsters made specifically for the big guns with the sandalwood grips, she turned to study the door. It was a large, old, hardwood door with a rusty brass knob and a carving of her big guns on the top. She looked around the side and it disappeared just like all the others they had come across. As she checked the knob to see if she could unlock it the door dissolved before her, leaving the doorknob in her hand as it went. No matter, she had never learned how to use those damn doors anyways.

Frowning, she tossed the knob on the taheen's chest and took a long look around. Nothing. Flat plains rolling out behind her and a forest in the distance to her left. She could make it before dark if she wanted, but there was something much more interesting to her right. Wishing for Lane's eyesight, Rebecca squinted in the bright sun; it had been the middle of the night in the other world and the sudden change had left her eyes and head aching. But despite the pain and poor eyesight she believed she could see something in the distance - mountains, or maybe a city.

One last look behind her to confirm that the door was no longer there and she turned toward the right and started marching herself across the dry, almost-hot field.

_xxxxx_

That had definitely been the morning sun that greeted her entrance back into her own world; Rebecca decided on it hours ago when the noon sun baked her shadow into the solid ground. She was heading west then. West, that direction she had always feared. She laughed to herself in the thirsty sun that she was now living her fear - stripped of her guns and headed west, although she knew quite well that her heart and soul had been banished to the west long ago. Well then, to the west she would follow them, and find who and what she would be there.


	2. Chapter 2

Dark had fallen four hours ago at the least, and it was near dusk that the 'slinger realized what she was walking towards really was a city and not a mountain. It was the biggest, busiest city she had ever seen, and the tallest - and she had lived in Gilead! This city may be in her own world, but it was a place she, and undoubtedly most gunslingers, were unaware of. If that were so she might actually like it here. If she made it at all that was; after a night of drinking followed immediately by a day's march across a broiling wasteland she was severely dehydrated and exhausted. The latter she could fight, but the lack of water was slowly wearing her down. Temporarily giving up her quest for the city, Rebecca removed her holster, tucked her gun behind her skirt (Lane had insisted both her and Sabrina wore skirts in the other town - he wanted the Tet to appear as normal as possible) and lay on the ground to sleep. With any luck the cool night would leave a puddle of condensation inside each holster; assuming she awoke before it evaporated again.

_Xxxxx_

Rebecca woke at the sound of hoof falls on the compact earth. It was still dark out, although a lightening in the sky behind her spoke of a soon to come dawn. She checked the holsters but found water enough only to make her more thirsty. She couldn't have been asleep more than an hour.

"Hail!" she called out against her training to the sounds of horses. Her voice sounded as chapped as her lips, deep like when she played as Robert but cracking on the vowels. "Hail!" she tried again to the same result.

There were mumbled voices before the horses audibly turned her way. She stood weakly, dusting off her skirt and tucking her shirt over the small gun on her back. By the time she was fully up and ready she had a new lie on the tip of her tongue.

Two riders pulled up in the dark, two dusty old shotguns pulled and pointed. Rebecca visibly flinched and shied away - her best bet in a new town was to act the demure female, especially without her big guns. Besides, she liked being feminine when it came down to it, there was just no room in gunslinging for females.

"What's yer name, sai?" One of the voices spoke. It was creaky from either misuse, or no use at all.

"Susannah Donaldson," she replied with her dry voice.

"Well, sai Donaldson, what are ye doing so far a piece out here?" It was the same voice, the other seemed content to listen a while.

"Sleepin'," she replied, "and trying not to die."

One of the voices laughed, she couldn't tell which, and then the second voice, decidedly younger and better used, spoke up. "Might be a trite bit easier not to die in the city, unless that's what's trying to kill you." There was laughter and even a bit of kindness in that voice.

"No, sai. T'was the heat and the birds trying to kill me. I was on my way to that city there when I collapsed from heat exhaustion."

One of the dark men leaned forward on his horse, trying to get a better look at her in the dark. "The birds?"

"Taheens, sai. There's one about a day's walk that way." She turned and pointed back towards the east, which would soon shed enough light that they would be able to see each other. She could already make out shadows on their faces, and they could see her silhouette clearly. Turning back she smiled, "he didn't make out quite as well as I, although if you give me some hours I'm sure we'll be about equal."

One man got the hint. She could hear him rustling around on his saddle before the clear slosh of liquid made its way to her ears. "Have as much as you need," he said and bent down to hand it to her in the dark. Close enough to see in the peach-grey light just barely spilling over the horizon, Rebecca found herself with a man about her age who was squinting to see as best he could around the shadow that engulfed her still.

Gladly taking the pouch and tipping it back for a long, refreshing drink, Rebecca closed her eyes and waited for the questions that were likely to come next.

"Want a ride into town?" the younger man asked as she gave him back his water bag. "We'll get you some proper rest and food and you can explain to us exactly how you ended up outliving a taheen in the middle of the wasteland."

"Thankee-sai," Rebecca replied wearily, "I'll tell you on the way." Her voice was still rusty and scratched, but it no longer cracked.

The younger man offered his hand and stirrup and she climbed up on the horse behind him, draping an arm around his middle for support. He was taller than Lane, who she had ridden this way with many times, and stockier too. Lane was all lean muscle, same as most of the 'slinger stock, but this man was thicker all around, although she could still feel the well-trained muscles beneath his shirt and in the way he held himself.

She told them on the lightening ride to the city a story of setting out from Pennelton with a Tet including her brother, Lane, and friends of theirs. After a long, tiring journey they found themselves in a gunfight with a group of taheens. 'Susannah' hid, but the others in her Tet were taken through a door the bird-things conjured in the desert air. She was left with the dead taheen and a vague notion of which direction they had been heading. "I passed out in the middle of the night from dehydration," she ended.

Neither man replied for a long time and she was unsure they even believed her. As they approached the gates of the city, which was much bigger than Gilead and strangely red, the man she was sitting behind turned to look at her. "No one comes here with truth on their lips. It's a good lie, daresay one of the better that I've heard, but we don't believe a word."

"Cry pardon?" He had caught her off guard. Rebecca was used to people doubting what she said was the truth, but never had a stranger so blatantly tell her so. "Are you saying, sai, that I killed a taheen, weaponless and alone?"

"Not at all, we'll be keeping an eye out for your friends."

"They were pulled through a door by the taheens," she replied stiffly.

"And where were they headed again?"

"I'm guessing here. Where are we?" She tried to change the subject but he wouldn't hear of it.

"Taheens bring people to here, sai, they never take them away. My guess is that they pulled you through from somewhere else. If you were able to kill him I'm very impressed." He shot her a smile as they went under black gates with a large, red, discomforting eye painted across the top. 

"Welcome to Thunderclap, sai Donaldson."


	3. Chapter 3

After reaching the younger rider's apartment, Rebecca was given some food and put to bed. She had thought at first that she wouldn't have been able to sleep, caught up as she was with thoughts of the Tet and the familiar looking eye over the gates to this strange, dark city, but her body proved too exhausted to stay alert, even in such a potentially dangerous situation.

As she woke, the gunslinger could smell trail-food: sausages, bacon, and strong coffee. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath and smiled at the welcome scent that made her stomach complain in hunger. "Lane?"

"Who's Lane?" Jonathan Fairmoor asked from the stove, an old black-iron thing that heated the room as well as the food.

Rebecca opened her eyes at the strange voice and quickly remembered where she was. "My brother," she replied, guardedly.

"I thought you said your brother's name was Shane?" He turned and studied her as the bacon sizzled. She wasn't very tall, nor very pretty, although he had somehow assumed in the early morning dark that she would be. She had dark blonde hair that hung just to her shoulders and hazel eyes that held a chill and made him slightly uncomfortable when they landed on his face. Scars littered the flesh that he could see – just small nicks and cuts here and there, but enough of them to be a bit strange on a poor girl from a small town.

But the strangest thing about her, the thing that threw him off in the dark and made him expect to see a buxom, dark-haired beauty by the light, was her attitude and speech. She didn't hold herself like a peasant; she held herself like a queen. And at that she held herself like a queen who was more used to saying "off with their heads!" than one who looked down kindly on her subjects. She spoke not the broken, backwoods vernacular of most of the peasant girls who showed up on the doorstep of the big red city, but a more refined, almost courtly speech instead. If it weren't for the fact that she had shown up alone, in dirty trail-worn clothes, he would have thought her a court-girl of one of the finer cities in In-world. Cressia, perhaps?

"No sai," Rebecca replied, pulling him from his thoughts, "had you been a little less quick to pronounce me a liar you would have heard me say that Lane was my brother. Shane is a friend traveling with us; his sister is Sabrina. There was also Stephen… and Ghengis." She didn't have to force a feminine blush at the final name; it would have come even had she tried to hide it.

Jonathan's eyebrows raised, "a lover?"

"No sai, just a friend." But she let her face show otherwise.

Jonathan nodded knowingly, "I see." He turned back to the stove to flip the bacon and continued on conversationally. "Do you have any lovers then? If you don't mind my asking."

"None, sai." Rebecca lifted an eyebrow herself at his forwardness. "Only one when I was younger, but it was never taken seriously."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two, sai."

"And never married?" Jonathan looked over his shoulder at her.

Rebecca nodded at his look and he turned back around. "My parents died when I was young and Lane was overprotective. No one seems to measure up."

"Not even this Ghengis fellow?"

Rebecca laughed and moved the covers back to get out of the bed; she still had her traveling clothes on. "Especially not Ghengis. Laney couldn't stand him, but he was a good friend of Shane's." Standing up, she moved over to the stove and took a deep breath. "It smells good, sai. Better than I've had in weeks."

Jonathan kept an eye on her, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. "You're very… amicable… around strangers."

She took a step back and looked up at him. He was taller than Lane by maybe two or three inches, topping him off at just over six feet. His hair was a lighter blonde than hers and about the same length, held back in the low ponytail that she always wore when parading as Robert Baine, gunslinger. He had light greenish-gray eyes and a strong jaw, but his face was pleasant. Friendly.

"You're very forward with strangers," she responded and he couldn't read her eyes. Rebecca had learned at a very young age to hide what she was thinking behind a blank mask; not even Lane knew what she was thinking most of the time.

Jonathan laughed, "Yes, I suppose I am. Coffee?"

"Thankee-sai." She sat down at the table and proceeded to look around the room as he poured her a cup. The bed was at the back with a small table next to it. There were papers on the top and she turned to him, surprised, "you can read?"

"Aye." He topped off his own cup and sat down across from her. "They try to teach as many as they can to read here. I could teach you, if you like."

"No need," she waved the offer away as she took a sip of the strong coffee.

"I didn't mean anything by it," he amended quickly, "they like their citizens to be literate, is all. You don't have to learn."

Rebecca put down her cup and laughed, to Jonathan it sounded like a sound she must not make often. "No, sai, you misunderstood. I already know how to read."

"Oh," he said, surprised.

Smiling quickly to put him at ease she explained, "a 'slinger came through years ago and taught Lane, who eventually taught me as well."

"A 'slinger?" Jon raised an eyebrow. "I didn't realize they had gotten so lax in their title," he said flatly and took a sip of coffee.

Rebecca was truly confused; lax in their title? Who didn't shorten the title to 'slinger? Of course, she had only known other gunslingers growing up. "Well, when you're not addressing one personally, why expend the extra energy?"

"Indeed." Jon had his cup still near his lips so he took another sip before putting it down. "I still don't believe most of what you've told me. Perhaps with the exception that you have had no lovers."

Rebecca smiled to herself; this man was a match to her talents. "Why believe that and nothing else?"

"You're much to independent and self-possessed for a woman from a place like Pennelton."

Rebecca put down the cup she had been holding, "yes, I suppose I'm a bit more independent than most, but Lane didn't know how to raise a little girl – he raised me the way he had been raised himself." It was a valid excuse and Jon could only shrug noncommittally. Rebecca leaned across the table and looked him in the eyes challengingly. "Well then, sai, who do you think I am?"

Keeping the short distance between them for a moment to see if she would back down, Jon eventually leaned back in his chair when she continued to stare at him with those cold brown eyes. Rebecca mirrored him, leaning back with her coffee mug in hand, sipping slowly.

"If I could guess anything in the world," Jon started slowly, "I'd guess you a queen. Or… or maybe a gunslinger."

Rebecca choked on her coffee and tried to hide it in a loud laugh. "Sai!" she sai and wiped fake tears from her eyes. "To be the only female gunslinger would be an honor indeed. But I am not that honorable."

Jon laughed a little at that, "no, I bet you aren't are you, sai?" He continued to laugh softly as he got up to check the bacon. "Hungry?"

"Starved." Rebecca sat back up in her chair as he set down her plate and dug in immediately. She closed her eyes with a smile as she savored the meal. "Lane's an awful cook," she laughed, "and I'm even worse."

"Well then, I will make sure to wake up before you every morning, Princess, and make your breakfast."

Jon was smiling playfully, but Rebecca sobered. "Don't call me that," she said softly, but cool, "I'm nobody's princess."

He raised his eyebrows and looked straight at her, "cry pardon, sai Donaldson."

She nodded and started to eat in silence, continuing her exploration of the room. It certainly wasn't big, although she really had no idea what a reasonable sized apartment would be for a man who wasn't a Gilead prince. Her own rooms were large, draped with carpets and curtains and furnished sparsely but extravagantly. Jonathan's apartment, which was really only the one single room separated into two areas by the table that sat in the middle, was also furnished sparsely. There were chairs in the entrance and a desk to one side, the stove and dining table made up the partition in the center, and the bed was against the back wall. There was a small wardrobe to one side of the bed, the small nightstand covered in papers to the other, and two windows on either side of the front door. None of the woods matched, and the quilts on the bed were shabby and thin. She couldn't remember the entrance from the early morning, nor much about the street that they had come in on, aside from the eerie red that covered many of the buildings.

"What is this place?" she asked between mouthfuls.

"Thunderclap, sai. Stronghold of the Good Man."

Rebecca choked again and this time couldn't laugh her way out of it. "Farson?" she managed to cough out.

"Aye," Jon studied her reaction carefully. If she had already been on her way here with her brother and friends, why was she so surprised?

_Where the hell did I end up?_ She thought to herself quickly, _why did the taheen bring me here?_

"Well, its good to know which side I'm on." She forced a smile and then forced herself to continue eating.

"What side were you on before?" Jon asked carefully.

Rebecca paused to consider and swallow. "Neither, I suppose. Farson's ideals are good: fair chances for all, destroy the outdated system of heredity within the gunslingers ranks, ect. But I don't believe he has anyone's best interests at heart except his own. He's a power monger." She paused to consider what she was saying. She hadn't really thought of it before like this; Farson was always The Enemy. He was to be fought and destroyed, at the price of her own life if need be. But she had rebelled against the system of the gunslingers her entire life – annoyed the Council continuously with her demands that they accept her as a gunslinger, fought for every inch they had given her, nearly killed herself (and the head of the Council) for the guns she had so proudly worn until they had passed through that damn door into the world that wouldn't let her keep her guns. She had been turned into a monster; a lying, deceiving, cheating bitch who fought for the ideals of truth and justice but didn't hold to them herself. And if Farson won? What then? Could she finally stop being Robert? Could she let down her hair, untie the wrap that was forever constricting her chest, and tell the people of Gilead that she was Rebecca Baine, daughter of Donald Baine, protector of the white? Perhaps. _If _Farson could beat the Gunslingers of Gilead.

"Still," she started again, keeping her face blank despite the thoughts raging within, "that's not the real question; the real question is _can he win_?"

Jon smiled; for mindlessly following her brother and friends she sure did have a mind for politics. "He can sai, and after breakfast I will show you how."


	4. Chapter 4

Jon had wanted to get moving immediately, but Rebecca insisted on bathing first. She had always been a little compulsive in her cleaning habits – even on the trail she kept a bar of strong lavender soap handy and stopped at nearly every river, pond, and lake for a quick bath. It was the princess in her coming out. Even the other 'slingers had noticed the fact that Robert Baine always smelled a bit too good… like a girl.

She bathed and put her old clothes back on; she had no choice with no other clothes and no time to wash them. As she was tucking the small gun into the back of her skirt, Jon opened the door to see what was keeping her. "What's that?"

Rebecca frowned and swore inwardly. "A gun I got from the taheen after he died," well, yes, that was technically the truth. "I didn't know where I was, and I was alone, so I thought it would be a good idea to keep it, just in case."

Jon gave her another 'I don't believe a word you say' look and motioned her to follow him.

"I was hoping you could teach me to use it…" she said meekly as she trotted after him down the street.

"You can use it already as we both well know, sai." Jon spoke without looking at her, "just the way you held it said as much." He turned and looked at her straight. "You've the eyes of a killer, sai, so don't play coy."

Rebecca crossed her arms and starred him down; if wanted to see killer's eyes then she would show him exactly what killer's eyes were.

Jonathan leaned forward, doing his best to keep her glare although it made him uncomfortable to do so. "Beautiful killer's eyes," he whispered.

Jerking back from him, Rebecca rolled her 'beautiful killer's eyes' – she wasn't a fan of empty compliments.

"Lead on, sai," she said and bowed shortly.

He did. He led her, in fact, all the way to the large red castle in the center of town. It wasn't built like Gilead's palace, the beautiful white structure that held all of the gunslingers and their families. This was a large, black and red, imposing blemish on the face of the world, with spires and towers and enough closets to hide all of Rebecca's skeletons.

"It's hideous," Rebecca breathed in awe.

"Aye, that it is," Jonathan laughed. "Let us hope the color scheme doesn't last once Farson's won."

"You're sure he can win?" Rebecca asked again, wondering exactly how Farson expected to beat the Gunslingers of Gilead with a ragtag army of disconcerted (if literate) immigrants.

"I'm sure," Jon replied with a smile, "come."

She followed him into the castle, arms prickling with goose bumps as they passed the threshold of the dark doorway. He led her through the corridors and Rebecca stayed close, lest she loose herself in the blood of the carpet and soot of the walls. As they broke through once again into the fresh air she breathed easier, until she looked into the sunken courtyard below them where hundreds of men, women and taheens were practicing with spears, swords… and guns.

"Oh Man Jesus," Rebecca blanched at the sight. Her experienced killer's eyes swept the ranks and recognized them for what they were: killers themselves. They would fight for survival and to keep their way of life just as the gunslingers would, and there were far more of them. Far more.

A ball of emotion was blocking her throat as Jonathan turned to catch her expression. "The protectors of the white have no chance against the red army," he said, lowly but with strength, and Rebecca could see that it was true.

xxxxx

Jonathan had taken her back and left her to do what she would with the rest of the day while he went back to the ugly red castle for a meeting. Rebecca felt uneasy; it was hard not to feel uneasy when you could see the fate of your world before your eyes. The Good Man was going to destroy Gilead, and the gunslinger's way of life, and all Rebecca could do was hope that Lane and the rest of the Tet stayed in the other world for good.

She was pacing the room restlessly, wondering what she could do (if anything) to stop this insane attempt on the lives of those she grew up with when there was a knock on the door. As she opened it, a young man stood on the other side, all dark hair and gangly limbs, and gave a short bow.

"Sai Donaldson?" Rebecca nodded and he went on, "your presence has been requested at the castle. You're to come with me at once."

Looking down at him, she knew how easily she could refuse, steal a horse and head for Gilead. But she had no idea in which direction Gilead lay. She had never heard of Thunderclap, and although she had a reasonable idea that Gilead lay to the east she couldn't know for sure, nor did she know how long the wastelands stretched out before the red city. If she died of dehydration on the way there she wouldn't do Gilead any good.

"Sai?" the boy interrupted her thoughts when she made no motion towards leaving. Rebecca looked up and nodded, following him out the door and down the street.

xxxxx

Jonathan met them just inside the foyer of the castle and without a word nodded to the boy and motioned her to follow. They went a different way this time, not straight through the courtyard but down a series of twisting hallways and circular stairs. By the time they reached the bottom of the final stairway, Rebecca was so thoroughly lost she had no choice but to follow Jonathan and do what he asked.

Stopping before a black door marked with a red eye, Jonathan stopped and turned to her, leaning over to speak quietly. "It'll do no good to lie to Farson," he whispered, "he always knows a lie from the truth. I suggest if he's asks a question you reply truthfully. He's an evil temper, so never think that just because he's smiling he's happy."

Rebecca smiled coldly, "I ken the type."

She could practically hear Jonathan's silent "indeed I bet you just do" as he turned to the door and opened it quietly.

The room inside was red - intolerably red in fact - as if it had been painted with blood that never dried but continuously refreshed itself in the walls and left its bright stain on everything within. It was hard to distinguish where the floor ended and the walls began, and where, exactly, the furniture was placed. Not that there was much furniture: a large desk in the center of the room with two uncomfortable looking wooden chairs before it was all that could be said for the spartan furnishings. Jonathan moved to one of the chairs and held the top, motioning for her to sit. Rebecca shook her head no; she didn't want to sit, only to be swallowed up by the blood covering everything and turned a permanent red herself.

Shrugging to himself, Jonathan forwent the chair as well and stood next to her. "Sai Donaldson to see you, sai." He paused as the red chair before them turned, exposing the man within, "Susannah, John Farson."

Her first impression of the man in the chair was not spectacular by any means. Rebecca had met and known hundreds of men in power, and this man did not carry himself the way they had. In fact, had she seen him in the street she would have taken him as any average man, certainly no threat to Gilead.

"_Farson is right,"_ the words from the fight three months ago with Aubaine came back to her now,_ "we aught to destroy the old ways, begin again, make things fair, make them equal. I agree completely. And if I ever meet him I will tell him so, right before I put a bullet between his eyes."_

And here she was, starring a Farson himself, with a gun tucked safely into her skirt. It would take no more than a second to pull it and shoot him right between the eyes. Farson would be dead; Gilead would be safe. And Rebecca Baine would go back to Robert, back to the web of lies and deceits that she had made for herself in her hometown. And Lane would still be gone in another world, and so would Ghengis. And she would never find them.

"Susannah Donaldson?" His voice was neither bass nor tenor, but had an even quality to it that made it both forgetful and hard to stop listening to. "It is a pleasure to meet you, sai."

Rebecca automatically fell into a curtsy, holding out her skirts as she did so. "The pleasure is all mine," she mumbled.

Farson's eyes lighted on her skirt and he smiled, almost absentmindedly. "Where did you get that fabric?" he asked, eyeing it as if he had never seen such a skirt. It was light wool, and brown, and nothing spectacular in her opinion.

She came up from the curtsy and smiled as blandly as she could. "My brother gave it to me, sai. I don't know where he came across it."

"Ahhh," he said with a distant smile, "it reminds me of home." Rebecca wanted to ask where home might be for a man like Farson, but he interrupted her before she could ask. "Could you come here please? I'd like to get a better look at it."

Turning to Jonathan, he only shrugged and made a motion that she better do as Farson asked. Rebecca nodded and moved closer to the desk, doing her best not to let her skirt touch the blood red polish.

"Around to this side, if you please," Farson cooed.

Swallowing and nodding again, Rebecca decided she'd really rather not, but didn't see how she had much of a choice in the matter. Ah well, if he were focused on the fabric he may not see her hand sneak behind to the small of her back for her gun.

Moving around the table and coming up right next to his chair, Rebecca's left hand was casually laying against her thigh, twitching in anticipation. Without warning, Farson reached out and grabbed her skirt, pulling her closer and rubbing the fabric between his fingers. His swift movement left her off-balance long enough that she couldn't grab the gun, and as she came out of the momentary shock of it she felt something odd. Perhaps it was the touch, or the fact that she had just come from such a world, but he didn't feel like he belonged in this place. He gave her the same feeling as two worlds back on her travels with the Tet – a world that had been decimated by plague. And she remembered suddenly where she had seen the familiar red eye – it had been in the empty world with the machines that only Shane and Sabrina recognized.

"Reminds you of home, does it?" she said dryly.

"Indeed it does, sai Baine," he said low enough that Jonathan couldn't hear. As her face blanched, Farson let go of her skirt and turned to the man waiting for them both, face wisely blank. "Would you wait outside, sai Fairmoor? I'll send Susannah out when I've finished with her."

Jonathan nodded, throwing a quick look to Rebecca to make sure she'd be fine alone with him. She barely nodded; she'd rather not have him hear who she really was, nor see what may happen in the room if she got her hands on the gun at her back. As the door clicked behind him, Rebecca moved back around the desk and sat down in one of the chairs, no longer caring about the color but only that Farson knew who she was.

"Who are you?" Rebecca crossed her arms and glared across the table.

A toothy grin that reminded Rebecca of a crocodile spread across his face as Farson eyed her. "So, Miss Rebecca Baine of Gilead," he said, ignoring her question, "what brings you to Thunderclap? Plan on shooting me in the head with the gun at your back?"

"I don't have a gun," she interrupted, but he continued as if she had said nothing.

"Were you going to take my head back as a present to sai Veriss? _Dear sai, thanks for the great night and getting me into the gunslingers, I couldn't have done it without you. Forever in your debt, Rebecca_."

Rebecca blanched and squeezed her hands into fists, itching to grab the gun at her back. She wanted desperately to refute him, to tell him he was a fucking liar and that she didn't know what Veriss had wanted that night, but she stayed silent, limbs shaking with the effort to keep her mouth shut and tears from her eyes.

"Now, Rebecca," Farson said and linked his hands over the desktop, "where are your friends? I'd rather not have a band of Gunslingers and a Wolf show up on my doorway unannounced. You I don't mind so much, being as you're not _really_ a gunslinger." He held up a hand at her protest, "your friends, sai. Where are they?"

Rebecca sat back in the chair, defeated. "I don't know."

"Now what makes me not believe you?"

"I said I don't know, and I'm telling the truth. They're in another world. A taheen pulled me through." Her voice was constricted from the effort not to explode into a fury of tears and bullets, "they could be anywhere by now."

"I see," he replied with a smile. "Well, so long as they wont be showing up anytime soon I won't worry about them. But you…"

"I told you, it wasn't my choice to come here. A taheen brought me."

He nodded slowly, "and what happened to the offending taheen?"

"I killed him," Rebecca waved a hand to show it wasn't important. She hadn't really been the one to kill him, Lane had, but she didn't have to tell Farson that. Fucking bastard would probably know anyways.

"Well then," Farson unlinked his fingers and sat back in the chair. "What do you propose I do with you?"

Rebecca's eyebrows went up. "I suppose, sai," she said dryly, "you can do with me whatever you wish. I can't very well stop you can I?"

A small smile crept up one side of the Good Man's mouth. "You could shoot me," he offered, but she thought perhaps trying would only prove fatal… to herself.

"I think I won't." She shrugged as if it didn't much matter, "if it makes any difference to you I'd like to stay here, as Susannah Donaldson, and see what happens."

"And if we attack Gilead?"

Rebecca's eyes darkened and her face showed none of the emotion she was feeling. "If you attack Gilead, what can I really do to stop you?"

The Good Man smiled.


	5. Chapter 5

The trip back had been a silent one, but as the door closed behind them Jonathan turned to Rebecca with a curious face. "What did he say?"

She rolled her eyes and took the gun out of her skirt, setting it down on the bed. "He said he wouldn't try to kill me, unless I tried to kill him first. Good news, wouldn't you say?"

Jonathan laughed although she was being sarcastic, "Well yes, I would say that's good news. I'm glad you didn't try to kill him in that case." He had almost seen the thoughts in her head when she was in that room, reminding herself where the gun was and which hand it was facing so she could easily pull it. It had been facing her left hand, he noted to himself, and so far it was the only hand he had seen her handle it with. She must be left-handed then.

Rebecca sat down heavily on the bed and picked the gun back up, turning it over in her hands and studying it. It wasn't made like her own guns (Gan she hoped Lane had had the sense to get her guns back from that town before he left – even if she never saw them again she'd like to know they were in good hands), but was flat on the sides with no compartment that she could see for bullets. The only reason she knew there had been bullets was that one of them had entered the taheen's head when she shot him. Holding it flat in her palm she seemed to be looking at it, but wasn't seeing the gun or the room before her at all. She was seeing sai Veriss, playing over in her head what Farson had somehow known about already.

"_I've a proposal for you,"_ he'd said as he stood in her doorway late one Midsummer's night. _"You do something for me and I will get you back into the apprentices. I will make sure the Council allows you to test."_

Rebecca had thrown on a loose shirt and pair of slacks when she came back from the Festival she had danced in. There were still hairs plastered to the sides of her neck as she stood just on the other side of the doorway, listening the fat, balding councilman's proposal. _"Anything," _she said without thought, _"I'll do anything to get my chance back."_

Stupid Becka. She had thought 'anything' meant cheating, killing, or some such measure he couldn't do himself because of his status. Become a spy, get into places that a well-known man can't and steal what he wanted. But he had wanted something else.

And she had already said yes.

"Fucking asshole!" Rebecca suddenly screamed and threw the gun across the room. The safety was on; she knew it wouldn't go off.

"Man Jesus, Susannah!" Jonathan said and jumped out of the way of the gun's path. "Are you trying to kill me? What did I do?" Once again he found himself thinking that she had killer's eyes, and might just have a temperament close to that of the Good Man. He'd have to be very careful around her.

Rebecca didn't answer him, but walked past him to retrieve the gun and leave, the door slamming angrily behind her.

Walking through the streets of Thunderclap, letting her skirts drag through the dust and mud, Rebecca thought on what Jonathan had shown her that morning, to keep her mind off what had transpired that afternoon. Farson had an army – a rather large army – and they were building their ranks to attack Gilead.

They couldn't honestly think they could beat the Gunslingers though? Gunslingers were the most perfectly honed killing machines she'd ever heard of… but their numbers were dwindling. With every son-less slinger, with every failure sent west, an entire line of gunslingers was ended. Whole hallways of the castle had been abandoned as the families that inhabited them died out and left no others behind in their place. It was shameful to be the last in a long line of Gunslingers, and that was why her father had so readily agreed to her becoming an apprentice.

Finding a bench outside of a pub, Rebecca sat and watched as citizens walked by, talking of mundane things – the weather, the price of coffee, who had been promoted to what rank the day before. All these people had come here, through all those wastelands perhaps, for the chance to do what she had done. Could she deny them the same right she had paid for so harshly? She could. She'd paid for it after all, not them. But it seemed they were trying to scrounge up the fee themselves, and she couldn't fault them that.

"It would be a most extreme way to get back at them," a voice next to her said conversationally. "Nothing more painful than watching everything you've stolen ripped from your cold fingers and given back to the folks you stole it from."

She swallowed hard and turned to find Farson standing next to the bench, leaning against the wall as if he were just a regular person, and not the man in charge of this bloody city. She studied him for a moment with cold eyes – even though he didn't give off the aura of a powerful man, he did give off an aura of different, of otherworldliness, that she would be able to identify easily in a crowd.

"I take it not every new guest gets the same privilege of meeting the man in charge?"

He smiled and sat down next to her, and she moved over compulsively, not wanting to be within touching distance of him. He gave her the same long look, from her toes up. "I'll give you what you want for free."

"And that is why I will never have any respect for you. You are a lazy man, and a coward, who lets others do the work for him," she spat back.

The side of his mouth lifted in a grin, "and you have so much respect for Veriss then, I see?" He leaned over towards her and ran a finger up her sleeve, making her shudder. "If that's what it takes to get a little respect around here, I'd be happy to oblige."

She smacked his hand away and glared. "I've still got my gun. You try and see how far your hand gets before you find a bullet-sized hole in it."

Chuckling, Farson clasped his hands together in his lap and gave her a coy grin. "Ah well, you're not my type anyways."

"Oh goody," she replied dryly. "What do you want? Why did you send the taheen for me?"

He looked down at his hands for a moment as if he wouldn't even dignify her with a response, but he did reply, in a bored voice that seemed to wonder why she bothered asking. "I'm in the business of making people happy, sai Baine. Generally I make myself happy, but the ends justify the means. If I have to make someone else happy to get what I want, so be it. You have the power to make me extremely happy – giddy with pleasure even – but I also have the power to make you happy in return, and I think that in this case I shall have to please you first."

"To the _point_, Farson."

He looked at her with a smug grin, "I can give you a position of command. I can give you what you have always been looking for – power and success – and I will let you do it as a woman. No extra tests, no proving yourself. If you agree it will be instant rewards, and you can be whomever you would like to be."

"You had a bird steal me from another world to work for you as a woman?" She looked at him skeptically, and although his face seemed to be readable, she doubted that she was getting the correct reading.

"You really aught to learn to trust people, sai Baine," he chided. "You think about it, and when you have made your decision you come to me."

"And if I decided not to help you?"

"Then I might decide not to be so generous."

She smiled to herself, doubting there was much he could do to her that would be worse than what she'd already been through.

"Have you heard of the Crimson King, sai Baine?" he asked conversationally, and her blood ran cold, her smile freezing on her face. "You have then, that's good." He patted her shoulder with a smile. "This was a wonderful conversation, we should do it again sometime soon."

And just like that he stood up and walked away into the crowd, where her assumptions had been wrong and he was quickly lost to the monotone. Rebecca gave a second convulsive shudder and wrapped her arms around herself; she felt ice cold despite the warmth of the day.

"You're back!" Jonathan said with a relieved smile as Rebecca opened the door to his apartment and walked in slowly. "I was beginning to worry you maybe got lost and thought it was the third red door on the right, not the fourth."

She eyed him, un-amused, and he shrugged – it had been a good try.

Making her way to the table, she sat down heavily in one of the chairs and laid her head back against the wood. She closed her eyes and folded her hands loosely into her lap, and waited.

"Uh, Susannah?"

She didn't move except to lift an eyebrow, so he would know she was listening.

"Are you ok, sai?"

Was she ok…that was a good question. She was alive, and that was on the positive side at least. But she was in the enemy's territory, effectively held against her wishes, with no idea how to get back out alive and no idea where her friends were. No, she was most assuredly not 'ok'.

"Where is Thunderclap?" she asked without moving.

Jonathan sat down in the chair opposite her and crossed his hands on the table. "I don't really know. Over some mountains, across quite a bit of wasteland… I've always used the doorways to get anywhere outside of this place."

She sat up, eyebrows pulled together in disbelief. "You don't know where you are? Do you at least know which way is west?"

"West?" he asked with a slight laugh. "Well, from this apartment west is toward the castle. The sun always sets behind the castle."

She nodded absently to herself, wondering how long the wastelands stretched out for. "How long before they are ready? The red army I mean?"

Shrugging, Jon looked at her seriously. "I don't rightly know. Many still believe it's impossible, others think the fight can be won through sheer numbers alone…."

"They won't win through numbers. Not against Gunslingers."

He gave her another suspicious glance at this matter-of-fact statement before continuing on. "If I had to guess offhand, I'd say at least two years."

"Would you?" she said and closed her eyes again, calling up the image of the red army on the courtyard below, training and drilling. "My guess would be eight."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: What a good guess Rebecca! This part of the story takes place 8 years after we last left Thunderclap. Sorry for the Huge jump, but I didn't want to waste time on all the silly little details, or the story would never end. So you get to be temporarily confused... like Lane.

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It was as if they had choreographed it. He caught her profile and his brows knit together in concentration, trying to decide if it were really her. She turned just then and caught his eye, her smile fading as her mouth parted into an expression as close to slack-jawed wonder as she would ever get. They started toward each other at the exact same moment and their arms came around each other. It had been eight years, and neither had known if the other survived.

"Is it really you?" he whispered into her hair, which had grown long past her shoulders.

"Of course its me, I don't hug strangers." She replied tearfully and pulled away, still within his reach but far enough that she could look at him. Had he gotten taller? He'd certainly filled out - no longer was he the gangly young man she'd known so well. Everything about him spoke Gunslinger. There was even an edge in his eye that she'd never seen before.

Her eyes had grown softer, he thought; her whole body language had grown softer. She'd become a woman. Finally. It had only taken eight years. Still, she looked good; she looked great. Better than he had ever seen her.

And then he realized that she looked happy.

The moment was quickly interrupted as a little girl ran over and grabbed hold of Rebecca's legs, her little blonde head barely reaching her thighs as she looked up with wide brown eyes. "Who dat?"

Swinging down, Rebecca picked her up and placed the girl on her hip with a fluid movement that spoke of habit. "That's your Uncle Lane, Becky." She gave him a slightly embarrassed smile and spoke very softly, "Lane, this is my daughter Rebecca."

"Your… your daughter?" His eyes traveled over the fair-haired child who really did not look much like her mother, before his brain settled on something rational to say. "You named her Rebecca?"

"Yeah," Rebecca laughed and set the girl down, giving her a pat on the bottom and the directions to go find her father. "I go by Susannah here. Susannah Donaldson Fairmoor."

Lane couldn't look anymore shocked if he tried. She was married? Had a daughter? Named her Rebecca? All he could coherently manage was a lame "what?"

It wasn't often that Lane Morgan was shocked into silence, and Rebecca knew that perhaps it was all a bit much without explanation, so she grabbed his elbow and moved him to the side of the street where she began to explain as quickly and quietly as she could what had happened. The taheen pulling her through the door, which promptly disappeared, walking through the desert toward the only thing she could see in the distance, a city of red, being found by two men, one of whom she married and had a child with. "I knew I was back in our own world by the feel of it," she explained finally, "but I didn't know where, so I didn't want to give them my real name, ye ken? I told them I was Susannah Donaldson."

Lane breathed a cynical laugh, his demeanor having changed from that of shocked silence to one of irate disbelief. "I can't believe you, Becka. You had a child with a man who doesn't even know your real name? You named her after yourself? And what in Gan's name is this place?"

"My real name _is_ Susannah now," she hissed, her own demeanor changing from embarrassed to defensive. "And this is Thunderclap."

Lane's eyes landed on something behind her and she forced her hunched shoulders to relax just before Jonathan's arm came around them, squeezing her in support. "Is this man bothering you, Sue?"

Rebecca turned to him with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Not at all. This is my brother, Lane Donaldson." She gave Lane a hard look with her eyes that said not to challenge her on this one or he would regret it. He had gotten used to those kind of looks years ago when they were kids, and they spent many days in the Council chambers, Rebecca telling a lie and shooting Lane quick glances not to betray her. "Lane, this is my husband, Jon."

Jon's hand came out to grip Lane's in a friendly shake. "It's a great pleasure to finally meet you, sai. I've heard a lot about you."

Lane's smile was weak as he wondered just what the man had been told by his delusional best friend in her effort to save her own skin. "I bet you have. I hope my sister hasn't ruined my reputation here before I even arrived."

"Not at all. I hope I can live up to any expectations you used to have about Sue's future husband." Jonathan smiled pleasantly, remembering how she talked of Ghengis and Lane's over-protective nature when it came to her interest in him.

"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," he replied, "I didn't expect that she'd ever get married." He gave Rebecca a grin that spoke of secrets, "and you have a daughter, I see. I suppose that makes me an uncle."

"Indeed it does, Uncle Laney," Rebecca finally spoke up, and then changed the subject quickly. "Where are the others? Shane? Ghengis? The Writer?"

"Dead, mostly," he replied easily enough, and she knew suddenly where the extra hardness in his eyes had come from. While she'd been playing house in Thunderclap, Lane and the Tet had been traveling dangerous worlds trying to stay alive. No wonder she'd turned soft. "Not the Wolf, of course, I don't think anything short of a bullet to the temple could kill him, and even then I think he'd survive."

"Dead?" she repeated carefully. "Everyone except you and Ghengis?"

Lane nodded, although he'd already finished mourning long ago for them. "Shane and his sister walked through a door, and when they returned…well, we had to shoot them. Then a madman with a machine gun shot Aubaine. Stephen was actually the last to go, about four years ago. Since then it's just been me and Ghengis."

"You shot Shane?" she said, a little loudly.

"He was trying to kill us," Lane said with a shrug. "His sister too – you remember her? Wouldn't hurt a fly, nearly cried when you told her off that first time? We had to shoot her too."

Oh what Rebecca would have given to be the one to pull **that** trigger. Sabrina had been a constant irritation to her, and after that first fight she'd been just itching to hurt the silly little git. But a shadow passed over Lane's eyes and she thought that perhaps he had felt differently about the girl from America.

"And Ghengis, where is he?"

Lane shrugged, "he's around here somewhere. We split up when we came through the gates, to see what we could find. I must say I think I trumped any discovery he might have made."

"Is this the same Ghengis you told me about?" Jon said with a playful smile as he looked down at his wife. She blushed and looked away down the street and he laughed merrily. "Oh my, an old flame. This should be fun."

It was just then that a booming bass voice traveled down the street from the other side of Jon, a very large, hairy man following behind it. "Lane, you will never guess where we are…" it began, and stopped short as Rebecca turned and leaned in front of her husband's form, and the smoldering orange eyes of the Wolf caught her presence.

"Rebecca!" He boomed and jogged forward, lifting her up off the ground in a bear hug that made her ribs feel as if they would crack.

She made an undignified noise close to an "ack!" before she managed to release an arm and pat his shoulder. "Nice to see you too. Please put me down."

"Oh yes, sorry!" he said as he put her back on her feet, holding her elbow so she wouldn't topple over from the sudden vertigo. "You're still alive! Where have you been? How are you? How did Lane find you? Who is this?" He was talking so quickly it was making her head spin – in fact, everything about the afternoon was making her head spin.

"This is my husband," she said steadily and reached out to his arm to steady herself, "Jonathan Fairmoor."

Jon smiled pleasantly, although his eyes were a little wide with surprise that the hairy beast before him was the same Ghengis she had told him about. She'd never mentioned the fact that he was an over-seven-foot-tall werewolf. "Pleasure to meet you," he said and gave a little bow, nervous of shaking the large paw.

"Your husband? You got married? When?"

Those fast questions again, and Rebecca gave him an even more abridged version of the past eight years than she had Lane. "Perhaps we could go get a drink and talk," she suggested, wanting to ask and tell more than she would be able to with Jonathan beside her. "I will see you at home," she said with a smile to her husband, and pulled away from him before he could reply. She'd seen the look in his eye at the name Ghengis had called her, and the words that he told her as they first entered the city came back full force.

No one comes here with truth on their lips. It's a good lie - I daresay one of the better that I've heard - but we don't believe a word.

And did he remember saying that? He'd learned to trust her, slowly, and she'd learned to tell him the truth, always. He didn't ask about her past, and eventually the both of them ignored the fact that there had ever been anything other than Thunderclap and marriage and the child. She'd never even bothered to ask him his own past – where he had come from before Thunderclap. The red city had been a chance to wipe the slate clean, to start over and forget what had brought you there. Although she could never really forget, in those moments that she looked down on her red troops and the realization came yet again that she was training them to fight against gunslingers – to kill gunslingers.

She'd have to warn Lane not to go back.

They sat in the darkest booth at the very back of the tavern she'd brought them to. It was still relatively early for most people to start into the taverns and Inns for dinner or drinks, so they were alone. Which was exactly what she had been hoping for. Civil chitchat took up the time until the drinks came, and once the barmaid was away Rebecca spoke without preamble.

"You have to leave as soon as possible, Lane. Don't go back to Gilead." She took a long drink as he starred at her in disbelief, trying to decide whether or not she was serious. "And for Gan's sake, put away your guns while you're here."

"Oh, that reminds me," Lane said, ignoring her completely. He grabbed the bag he had been carrying and dug around in it to the bottom, coming back up with two guns with the familiar sandalwood grips.

Rebecca swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that had begun to well up in her eyes at the sight of them. "Put them back," she said, her voice hoarse but steady.

"But Becka…"

"Put them away, Lane. They aren't mine anymore." It broke her heart to say so, after all the hard work she'd put into receiving and keeping them, but she couldn't take them back. There was still a very small part of her that held respect for the guns and what they represented, if no other part of gunslinging, and she wouldn't disrespect that by using them in her new position.

"Are you kidding?" Lane hissed, obviously getting annoyed with her current behavior. "Do you know what I went through to get these guns back, Rebecca? And now you don't even want them anymore because you're too busy playing mommy?"

"Lane," Ghengis started and put a large hand on his arm, but Rebecca cut him off.

"Playing mommy? I am not playing anything, Lane! This is my life. I was dragged through a door by a dead bird, left in the desert to die, and brought here where revealing who I really was would have gotten me killed!" She leaned forward over the table, whispering angrily at him, "do you know where you are Lane Morgan, Gunslinger of Gilead? You are in Thunderclap, stronghold of the Good Man. John Farson, Lane."

That served to stop all his anger before it bubbled over back at her. "Farson? This is Farson's hideout?"

"Yes," she said and leaned back, but she could not look him in the eye.

"Christ," he said and ran a hand through his hair. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "I don't know why the taheen brought me," she lied, "but I couldn't very well go anywhere else – the entire place is surrounded by wastelands. They use the doorways to go where they need."

"And you couldn't use a doorway?" he spat back.

"I never learned." She paused, unsure what she should tell him, and how much of it he'd actually believe. "Lane, I didn't come here by choice, and I didn't originally stay here by choice. But it's become home."

"Gilead is home."

"Not for me," she said and looked him in the eye finally. "Not anymore." They were both silent for a moment and she took a long draught of her beer. "I never felt comfortable there, Lane, not since I was nine. I never felt like I could be me…"

"Oh, and you can be you so much easier here, where you lie to your husband about your name and your past?" He was starring at her, a smug eyebrow lifted as he took another drink.

"You don't understand. You don't understand at all." Rebecca shook her own head and looked down at the stained table. "I don't lie to Jon. He doesn't ask about my past, and I don't have to lie to him. I mean, it wouldn't matter even if I told him, not now. Farson already knows who I am – who I really am…"

Both Lane and Ghengis (who had so far been smartly staying out of this conversation) looked up at her with wide eyes. "He knows?" Ghengis asked before Lane could.

"Yes." Rebecca took a drink as if to steel herself and spoke. "Jon took me to him the first day I arrived. He's a creepy man, to say true. Not the powerful type that you would guess, but the people of Thunderclap follow the ideas, not the man. He already knew exactly who I was, and everything I had done, and that we had all been traveling together. He was less concerned with me than with you all. When I couldn't tell him where you were, because I honestly didn't know, we came to an agreement that he wouldn't kill me if I didn't try to kill him first. It's worked out well so far; as you can see I'm still alive."

"And so is he I take it," Lane replied dryly. Rebecca nodded and he finished off his drink, slamming the glass down on the table angrily.

"What is it that you do here, if I might ask?" Ghengis said, ignoring the moody man next to him. He'd gotten used to Lane's tantrums over the years, and found that the best way to get through them was to ignore him until he calmed down. Of course, Becka seemed able to rile him up better than anything else they'd come across so far.

Rebecca looked down at the table again, "I'd rather not say."

"Because we wouldn't like the answer?" He asked softly.

"Right." She drained the rest of her beer and set the glass down carefully.

Ghengis sighed and shook his head. "I suppose if you are happy…"

"No! No, it doesn't matter if she is happy," Lane said a little loudly. "You have forgotten the face of your father, sai Donaldson." Rebecca winced and bit her lip, her hands clenching on the table before her. "You have forgotten the face of your father and you have forgotten your duty as a gunslinger. You are still a gunslinger, Rebecca, and this is…" He ran a hand through his hair again, making it stick up in points as he tried to find a word that could even describe the amount of backstabbing blasphemy she was engaged in.

"This is what, Lane? Deceitful? Unethical? It's not anything I'm not used to." She sat back and crossed her arms, starring him down. "I'm still doing the same things I did as a gunslinger. I'm lying, I'm cheating, and I'm fighting for my place in the world. Only now I'm doing it without you; so you're welcome Lane, because I didn't drag your perfectly clean white soul into this one."

Red was creeping up the back of his neck at her words, mostly because he knew them to be true. "They've brainwashed you," he said with conviction. "They've brainwashed you into believing the shit that he shoves down your throat."

"Brainwashed me?" She yelled back at him, "no, Lane. They have been brainwashing you since you were born. The first-born sons of gunslingers are better than everyone else, because of their breeding. They are the only ones who can become gunslingers; they are the only ones good enough. Well guess what Lane, its not fucking true!"

She threw a napkin at him and stood, pacing back and forth in front of the booth.

"Oh fuck you, Rebecca! You're just upset because they are right - because you couldn't handle being a gunslinger!"

They both saw the change in her eyes as they clicked into killer mode, the 'battle reds' flashing deep within, and if she'd had a gun Lane would have been dead already. As it was she was weaponless and Ghengis had the foresight to get up and grab her arms before she could grab hold of one. She struggled against him for moment, trying to get past him so she could throttle her best friend to death, but the Wolf far surpassed her in strength and stamina.

"Settle down, Becka," he whispered, "he didn't mean it. You know he didn't; he's just upset." He squeezed her arms and sat her forcibly in a chair facing their table. She was breathing heavily, her lips pressed into an angry line and tears spilling over her cheeks as she looked past him towards the bleary man in the corner.

Switching to look at the Wolf instead, she spoke so both of them could hear. "You need to get out of Thunderclap. Farson will already know that you are here. Stay away from Gilead; he's poised to move at any time and Gilead can't beat him. Trust me."

She looked from the Wolf to the Gunslinger and then stood up, Ghengis releasing his hold on her arms. "I just wanted the same chance as you, Laney. I want my daughter to have the same chance as you to be whomever she chooses. I'm sorry." She turned and walked away as quickly as she could, exiting the tavern and turning a corner before she began running, tears streaming down her face.


	7. Chapter 7

Rebecca walked around the red and black city for a long time, missing the clean white streets of Gilead for the first time in years. Lane's presence had once again started that inner battle between the gunslinger in her and the woman who had always fought tooth and nail for what she wanted. By the time she returned home it was well past dark.

She let herself in and shut the door behind her silently so she wouldn't wake her daughter. She was just turning when Jon spoke. "Your brother stopped by two hours ago and left you a package. He said they'd be at the Inn down the street and were leaving in the morning for home."

Rebecca's eyes lighted on the package, wrapped inconspicuously in brown cloth and sitting on the table near the door, but she turned away from it and made her way further into the room. They'd gotten a new apartment when Becky was born, because Jon's original apartment had been so small when she began living with him, and the front room was nearly as big as his entire apartment had been before, with a seating area in front for entertaining and the kitchen and dinner table in the back. There was a hallway off the side with the two bedrooms attached.

Jon was sitting at the table, hand wrapped around an untouched cup of tea. He looked worried and slightly suspicious of her, as if perhaps she was not the same person she had been that morning. And she wasn't.

"Are you ok?" he asked softly as she sat across from him, making an obvious effort not to crumple into the chair like a used rag.

"Yes," her voice was hoarse from yelling and crying.

They fell into silence, Jon studying his wife as she stared absently at the floor. He took a deep breath and slid his tea away from him. "Sue," he began softly, "I know I said I'd never push you about your past, and I know you wouldn't have lied in the first place unless you felt you had to, but I think there are some things you need to tell me now, if I can ever trust you."

She nodded her agreement and closed her eyes, waiting for whatever he felt he needed to know.

Starting off slowly, he asked, "is your real name Rebecca? Is that why you wanted to name our daughter Rebecca?"

"It was," she nodded and looked at him, so he would know she wasn't lying.

"And Lane?"

"My best friend from childhood," she answered. "The only other man who can tell when I'm lying… usually."

Jon laughed softly; he'd caught her in a number of lies, before she'd felt she could finally trust him. He was sure an even greater number had slipped through without his realization, however, and he took his time questioning. He didn't want to press her too quickly, because he knew her moods and knew how quickly she could change into a cornered animal in survival mode; but he was curious nonetheless. "Donaldson?"

Rebecca smiled softly, glad that he wasn't freaking out as she had expected, or demanding to know too much too soon. "My father's name was Donald, it seemed appropriate." She saw he was about to ask her another question and spoke before he could. "He's still alive, as far as I know. My mother died when I was three."

A smile slowly spread on Jon's face, "so you really were raised by a man who didn't know any better how to raise a girl?"

"Not everything I say is a lie," she replied. "I spent most of my days as a child dressed in pants and playing rough with the boys. I eventually started dressing as a boy and telling everyone my name was Robert."

Jonathan laughed, feeling better about her openness. "So Lane _really_ didn't expect you to ever marry anyone."

"Not unless it was him, no." She smiled a little and shook her head. "I was a headstrong pain in the arse."

"You still are," he replied and kissed the palm of her hand. "Thank god Becky is such a good child"

"It's a better situation for her, I think." Rebecca replied, sobering. "It's a different society; she doesn't have the same… expectations that I did."

Jon nodded and leaned back in the chair, trying to judge his next question. "You're not from Pennelton are you?" She shook her head as he had expected and he leaned forward, speaking softly. "Can you tell me where you are from?"

Rebecca looked down, obviously trying to weight the pros and cons of telling him the truth, but seemed to steel herself as she straightened her shoulders and looked back up again. "I'm from Gilead." She searched his face for some indication of what he was thinking, but although his eyes widened slightly in surprise, the rest of his face remained neutral. "My father was Donald Baine, Gunslinger. I was a Gilead Princess."

"Your father was a Gunslinger?" he asked incredulously. Rebecca didn't feel the need to nod, and instead kept a steady gaze on his face to monitor his reaction. "And you are here, training an army against him? You would kill your father and destroy everything he fought for?"

"Well, I prefer not to think of it in that way, but yes."

"Man Jesus, Sue. What did he do to you?"

It was Rebecca's turn to look surprised. "What did he… he did nothing. My father was the only one who ever believed in me. He would understand what I'm doing here, even though no one else can."

"What **are** you doing here?" Jon asked.

"Living the way I want to," she said simply, "as a woman who isn't held back from what she wants just because she is a woman. In Gilead I couldn't have been a mother and made a name for myself; it was one or the other, and I chose the other. It made me into a horrible person, being denied that basic right. I'm much happier here, and I think my father would be happy for me."

Sitting back in his chair, Jonathan took a moment to process the information. "What did you want to do so badly that you would forgo any chance of having a family?"

"Oh, I thought you would have guessed by now," she said, mildly surprised. "I was Robert Baine, Gunslinger of Gilead."

Jonathan studied her suspiciously and she shook her head in disappointment. "See? This is why I want to change things. Even you don't believe me."

"Well it is a little bit… impossible, ye ken? For a woman to become a gunslinger."

"I ken that very well, thank you," she replied tartly. "But a little thing like bigotry wasn't going to stop me. You know me Jon, when I want something I go after it, any cost."

He nodded, but she could see that he still didn't fully believe her. She stood up and walked across the room, grabbing Lane's package. As she sat back down again she put it in front of him and sat back, nodding to it with her eyes. "Open it."

Jon looked at her for a moment, trying to read her mind, but gave up against her steel façade and unwrapped the brown cloth, revealing two revolver pistols with sandalwood grips. He recognized them immediately for what they were – anyone in Mid-world would have. The only men with the sandalwood guns were Gunslingers, and the only way to get a pair of guns like this was to be the first-born son in a long line of Gunslingers.

"These are your fathers?" he looked up at her.

"These are mine," she replied seriously, "my father presented them to me on the day that I passed my test from the apprenticeship into being a fully-fledged Gunslinger in my own right." Her eyes traveled back down along the barrel of the guns, to the sandalwood grips that had been worn by the hands of all the men in her line back to the Eld.

"I think…" Jon started, then stopped again. "I think I have something you might want." He got up and went into the hallway and she could hear him open a drawer in their bedroom and lift something out. She watched him as he came back out to the room and set a box on the table, which he nodded at as he began his story.

"That first morning that we found you, and you told us about the taheen, I went back out to find him and see if the story was true and which bird it was so we could tell Farson. You were sleeping, and I told the neighbors to keep an eye on the place and to stop you if you left, just in case we needed you. On my way out to where you said the taheen was I stopped where we found you, to look around and make sure we didn't miss anything… and it turns out we had. These were thrown behind a bush."

He lifted the lid of the box, revealing the empty holsters that she had been wearing as she came through the doorway, and that she had taken off to collect water in while she slept. Rebecca had tossed them behind some scrub bushes, thinking she would never see her precious guns again, and knowing that if she were caught with them someone might recognize them as Gunslinger holsters.

"Of course, it didn't mean they were yours, and after I saw the gun you were carrying, which obviously wouldn't have fit in either of these, I dismissed them, put them in the box, and promptly forgot about them. But I think…" He looked up at her and caught her eye and she nodded.

"They are mine," she said softly, and ran a timid finger down one, feeling the lines that had been burned into them when they were made, the edges of the wildcats slightly tattered with age. It was her family badge, the wildcat, and it was the way Gunslingers could recognize each other even if they had never met – she knew all of the family crests by heart, and would recognize which family any man was from who wore them, even if she did not know him. Lane's holsters had a kelpie on them.

Picking one up, she held it as if it would shatter in her hands. There were still bullets. My god, Jonathan hadn't even known what he was holding when he grabbed them – if he had, he would have gone straight to Farson and the man would have been obliged to do something about her so public knowledge that a gunslinger was in town wouldn't surface. In it's own strange way, Ka had been working for her that day.

"Well?" Jonathan interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up at him, slightly startled.

"Well what?"

"Put them on."

Rebecca's face paled at the suggestion and she shook her head. "I don't think I could. I don't think its right. I mean, its one thing to have _been_ a gunslinger and now be fighting for the other side, but… no. I can't. It's not right."

"Susannah," he said and grabbed her hand over the things on the table. "You are the only woman to have ever been given this privilege. You deserve to wear them. Not out, perhaps, we'd have a mob battering down the door in two seconds if they knew who you were, but the guns are yours, you said so yourself. I think you should put them on."

She shook her head, and he squeezed her hand again. "They were a gift from your father, and you said your father would understand. You fought for this right, and you are still fighting for this right. Don't let the memories of old men keep you from who you are and who you are supposed to be." He could still see the reluctance in her demeanor and he smiled reassuringly, "Sue, we aren't fighting what the guns stand for, we're fighting what the men who wear the guns have turned it into. You know that. We still believe in all the things these symbolize – happiness, freedom, truth – we just don't believe in the way those things are being dealt out to only the precious few on top."

"But I was the precious few on top," she whispered hoarsely.

"And that is what is going to prove us right in this fight. One of their own saw the wrongness of what they are doing, and fought to make things better." He got up from the chair and came around next to her, kneeling on the ground and kissing the palms of her hands. "Your father saw what they were doing, how unfair it was, and he began the fight by giving you the guns. He asked you to continue it, and he'd be proud to know you hadn't completely turned your back on what they symbolize."

Rebecca could remember the face of her father – it had always looked old and melancholy, even when she was a young girl. He'd always looked at her with sadness behind his eyes, and she'd never known if it was the loss of her mother that caused that pain, or the thought that the line would end with him if she didn't succeed. But now that line would end with her, and perhaps the shadow had passed when he'd passed on the guns.

"Aye," she rasped, "I'll put them on."

Jonathan gave her hands a squeeze and let go as he stood up, stepping back so she could stand as well and strap the holsters over her hips. They still fit, although they looked awkward on top of the skirt she was wearing, and her fingers worked dexterously at the buckles with a familiar feeling that made her smile. When they were both on and buckled, she ran her hands down her hips with her eyes closed, lips twitching up as her fingers hit the cool leather. Jon had seen her run her hands over her hips many times when she felt threatened, and he realized now that she had been unconsciously reaching for guns that were not there.

Reaching out for the guns, her hand stopped and hovered over one as she paused. She had lusted after these for so long, given every shred of humanity she had for them, and then lost them eight years ago. She learned again how to be human in that time, and the absurd thought crossed her mind that she might turn back into that monstrous bitch again as soon as she touched them. But she lowered her hand and picked up the right gun and the weight of it in her palm felt just as she remembered it, and the weight on her hip was more comforting than a hug as she placed it into the holster. The other followed after and she placed her hands on the sandalwood grips and smiled.

Jonathan almost immediately regretted what he had done, as her smile turned into the cold killer's smile that he'd seen when she first arrived in Thunderclap. She was damn terrifying with a pair of big guns on her hips, her eyes flashing red ice, her grin cold and menacing with the memory of the things she had done for and with the guns.

She pulled the left and cocked the hammer so fast he nearly had a heart attack, but although her finger twitched at the trigger she didn't shoot, and it was back in the holster just as fast as it had been pulled. He swallowed quite audibly as she frowned, obviously unhappy with the speed of her pull. He shouldn't have been worried – Ghengis had said once that a Gunslinger could never accidentally shoot anyone, and he was right for the most part. A Gunslinger as experienced as her would never shoot anyone, unless she thought they deserved it.

Luckily for Jon, Rebecca pulled only two more times before she finally undid the straps of the holsters and set them both back into the box with a sad smile. She took a deep breath and placed Lane's cloth over top of them before closing the lid and placing a hand on it, as if the guns would jump out on their own. Jon wasn't sure they wouldn't.

He laughed nervously, "I'm glad I didn't know you when you wore those on a regular basis. They are terrifying."

Looking up, Rebecca left her dream world and frowned at what he said. "They're just guns, same as any other. Any gun can kill you – it's the person behind it that makes them deadly."

"While I agree with your last statement, I have to say that those are not just any guns. Those are Gunslinger guns, and that is terrifying in and of itself. The only people who have ever held those guns have been the most deadly people in Mid-world. If there is any problem your troops will face in the battle before us, it will be getting over their fear of those guns. I can see now why no one has rebelled against the Gunslingers before – you are a terrifyingly brutal bunch of cold-blooded killers."

"Beautiful killers eyes," she mumbled but was looking towards the box with a new expression. One of curiosity and cold planning. She had never thought before that it was the aura surrounding the Gunslingers that made them so frightful, simply because they didn't frighten her. She could look any Gunslinger in the face and shoot, and the fact that he could do the same to her was just that: a fact. But to the men and women she was training to fight the Gunslingers it was more than just the fact that they could shoot back. Gunslingers were a thing of legend – and her army would have to get over the fear of the legends before they could fight and win.

Ka like a wind, but she knew how to take down Gilead now.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: This chapter contains Rebecca's history, since some people were asking for it. Her past is the same in all the stories up until the day after she was raped/had sex for her chance to test (whichever way you prefer to look at it), so this history can be used for all the other stories as well, up to that point.

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"Sue?"

"Hmmm?"

"Are you asleep?"

"No."

They had gone to bed an hour ago, Rebecca emotionally exhausted but still too charged to fall asleep. She'd assumed Jonathan had fallen asleep already, but apparently he was awake too, mulling over her revelations with his eyes closed.

"Can I ask you one more question?" he whispered into her neck, where his head had been laying for the past hour as they spooned sleeplessly.

"Yes."

"How in Gan's name did you ever become a Gunslinger?"

She laughed and turned over to face him, their foreheads pressed together, their arms and legs tangled under the sheets. "It involved a lot of lying and fighting. I don't regret it, but I don't think I would ever do it again if I had known."

He caressed her face with his thumb, following the lines of her bones, and smiled. "Was it really that bad? You really wouldn't do it again? Not even for the right to say you were a Gunslinger?"

She laughed softly, although there was a note of bitterness in it. "It was honestly that bad. Worse, even. It wasn't the fighting so much as… as other things. The fighting was easy; the lying was easier. Turning into a ruthless monster who would do anything for the guns was the hard part." Her lower lip quiver a bit in the dark, "returning to humanity was the hardest."

"Oh Sue," Jonathan pulled her close and held her for a moment. He kissed the top of her head before letting her go, but kept an arm wrapped around her back for support. "Can you tell me? I'd love to hear how a girl actually managed to become a Gunslinger."

"I can. Not all of it, mind. There are certain things that I wouldn't feel right telling anyone. But I can tell you most of it." She shifted herself into a more comfortable position and began her tale. "I suppose it all started when my mother died."

xxxxx

There had been a flu going around the castle. Rebecca had already caught it and survived, but her mother wasted away to nothing under the effects of the virus. She died within two weeks, and Rebecca's father was left with a three-year-old girl to raise himself. There were nurses, of course, but none of them could keep her in line, and many quit. The only 'girly' thing she would do was to continue the dance classes that her mother had taken her to before her death.

As she got older, Rebecca started acting more and more like a boy, rebelling against dresses and dolls, pulling out her pigtails and playing in the mud until she could wrestle any of the boys her age to the ground. At the age of nine, her father cut her hair, effectively putting an end to the pigtails he tried so hard to keep on her head, and that she tried so hard to ruin. She looked even more like a boy that she had before, and when she bragged to her father that she'd convinced one of the apprentice boys that she was her cousin, and then proceeded to beat him at a game of wrestling, he decided to finally do something to cull her outrageous behavior.

Donald announced that they would be traveling to his sister's place, to trade children so Rebecca could learn to grow up in the courts like a proper young woman. While there he would take over care of his nephew, Robert, and bring him back to train him as an apprentice gunslinger. Having no sons of his own, he had no other choice to pass the line on than to go to his next of kin. So they had a pleasant visit with Rebecca's aunt and cousin, and Donald returned home with Robert in tow.

"Or so we told everyone," Rebecca said with a smile. "The two of us made up so many lies on the way back to cover us that my father actually bought me a book of blank pages to write them all down in, so I could spend the nights memorizing who had been told what."

"No wonder you're such a good liar," Jon replied and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

Several years passed without any incidents, and they seemed to be in the clear until one hot early summer day, when a sixteen-year-old Rebecca decided to go swimming after class. She found a lonely stretch of river, stripped down (which included taking off the wrap that she had so recently had to tie around her chest to keep her sex from showing), and jumped in.

"You tied your breasts down?" Jon laughed and grabbed one, squeezing fondly. "Why would you ever want to do that?"

She batted away his hand; "Robert always did look rather chubby around the chest, even though his arms were skinny. It's a wonder more people didn't catch on. Now shush."

She was quite content swimming placidly against the current when three boys suddenly jumped in, scaring the living daylights out of her and making her swim towards the shore in a panic. One of the boys, Lane Morgan, swam after her to drag 'Robert' back to swim with them, but as he put his arm around her he got a handful of something he wasn't expecting. He let go in surprise, she swam around to the opposite side of a tree that had fallen partway into the water, and the next day after class he approached her about the whole situation. Knowing she would later regret it, she told him the truth, and Lane became her first and only friend.

It took less than a year for Rebecca to regret what she'd told Lane. They became nearly inseparable, but only because Rebecca was constantly at his side to make sure he didn't screw up and blab her secret. The next spring, as the snow was melting and everyone was itching to get out of the castle, they began a friendly game of wrestling and Lane picked her up. His foot slipped on the muddy grass and he lost his balance, falling over backwards and sending his best friend down on her head. Her collarbone cracked in two, and Lane was forced to find a doctor, who promptly discovered and revealed her secret to the Council of Gunslingers.

For all it was worth, they could have been in more trouble. She was kicked out of the apprentices, Lane was given some remedial labor job for a month to learn his lesson, and her father was merely slapped on the wrist. Rebecca began showing up to class to pretend to flirt with apprentices, but really to listen in to what Cort was teaching them. When he finally kicked her out of the near vicinity of the class because of the effect she was having on the apprentices, she was forced to find some other way to learn her lessons. So she began 'courting' Lane, and they would run off to a clearing by the river after class, so he could recite the day's lessons and eventually teach her the physical training as her collarbone healed.

"It never did heal correctly, did it?" Jon said as his fingers traveled lightly over the sharp corner of bone that still stuck up in the middle of her shoulder.

Rebecca laughed, "no. I couldn't keep still, and tried using it too soon. I've been weak in that arm ever since. Hitting it hurts, moving my arm just right hurts, cold hurts. I learned to use my other arm instead."

"I always thought you were left-handed?" Jonathan said and kissed the bump on her collarbone.

"Only since I was sixteen," she replied with a smile.

Rebecca was in a sling for three full months before her arm was pronounced well enough healed, and then it was quite some time before she was able to even lift a fork with it, much less a gun. She spent most of her time working on her flexibility with it, gaining muscle slowly as she strengthened it through dancing. By that Midsummer, however, her strength was back, and the morning after she was told by the head councilman, sai Veriss, that she could re-join the apprentices.

"Wait, he just let you rejoin? No problems that you were a girl?"

Rebecca couldn't keep his gaze, even in the dark as they were. "There was a little more to it than that, but that's the part I don't feel comfortable telling." She could see his face change expressions, the shadows of his eyebrows lifting subtly, but he merely nodded and made a 'go on' motion with his hand.

A deal was struck, in which Rebecca would train for her test like a normal apprentice, and the council would let her go about her business. They had no control over her as a court girl, and then were sure it would all end in her failure. If she tested and won she would be Robert Baine, Gunslinger, and never again could she go back to being Rebecca in Gilead. If she lost she returned to court as a woman, married the man of her father's choosing, and forgot any dream of being more than a mother and wife to a Gunslinger. It would be a life worse than being sent West – she would be forced to remain and remember what could have been.

"They had a lot of faith that you would loose, it seems to me," Jon interrupted. "I can't imagine they would make that deal with even the slightest notion that you would win."

"I wouldn't have made it if I had thought I would loose," she replied steadily. "They had the advantage, of course, and… and they almost won…" Her voice faded and caught on something in her throat, and he knew she must be thinking of that unspeakable thing that she had done for the chance to test.

"It's ok, Sue," he whispered and ran a hand up her arm in comfort, but she seemed to shy away slightly, and it worried him.

"No," she whispered so low he could barely hear her. "No, it wasn't ok. Veriss taught me who was in charge, who was more powerful. I put off my test for a long time because I couldn't… I didn't have what it took to win. He broke my spirit and it took a long time to put it back together again."

"He was the one who turned me into a monster."

And she had been, for many months after Midsummer. She'd shied away from people, cowed before the Council, frightened Lane and seriously worried her father. She still wasn't sure how she'd managed to find her way out of that dark place she found herself in, but it took a lot of rage and a lot of practice, and a will of steel that surpassed most.

Walking into the council one day near her nineteenth birthday, she challenged Veriss himself to her test, instead of Cort as was traditional. She hadn't wanted to fight someone who didn't know she was a girl, just in case, but mostly she wanted to kill Veriss. And she tried her hardest, and he fought her tooth and nail back. They had been struggling for quite some time, Veriss' older, out of shape body beginning to weaken, and in desperation he sent a cheap shot towards her weak collarbone. Her whole right arm went limp under the pain of it, and Rebecca had dropped to a knee. But he wasn't counting on her left arm, which she had so far been favoring in the fight, and she grabbed the spear quickly, lashing out with an unearthly scream towards the grinning man. She served him a well-placed cut over the chest and belly, and he stumbled back, caught off-guard by the movement, giving Rebecca just enough time to leave the spear on the ground and scramble over the line to Gunslinger safety.

"Man Jesus I bet he was pissed."

"Indeed he was," Rebecca agreed, "he came after me with the spear as I sat on my knees, trying to catch my breath." She grabbed his hand and brought it around to her back, where a large scar sat just below the lowest rib on the right side. "The only thing that saved me was the wrap I wore around my chest. The thick fabric caught the tip of the spear and moved it just enough that it glanced off my rib and went in wrong. It hurt like hell, but he didn't catch any major organs, like he'd intended."

His fingers ran over the scar, which was thick and short, bumped up as if it had healed badly. "My god, he tried to kill you after you won?"

"In front of a rather large crowd, yes. It took a minute for anyone's senses to react to what they didn't believe they were seeing, but eventually some Gunslingers rushed in to drag him off me and Lane ran for the doctor who had bandaged my collarbone."

So instead of enjoying her first day as a true Gunslinger, Rebecca was rushed to bed, stitched, bandaged (at least she was used to being bandaged around the chest) and told not to move too much so the stitches wouldn't rip out. She'd received plenty of guests in bed, her father sitting to one side and Lane standing against the wall on the other. And when her father presented his guns to her in a formal ceremony after she'd stopped bleeding that evening, she could feel the stitches pull as she leaned on Lane's arm and bowed to the senior Gunslinger.

As she first strapped the holsters with the sandalwood guns on, she knew that it had all been worth it, every seedy thing she done, every lie she'd told, because now she had the guns and they couldn't take that away from her.

She sighed, "but they could, and Veriss made it a point to let me know that every chance he got. The rest of the council kept him in line, because they felt bad for what he'd done at the test, but they were not any happier than he that I had passed. It would make them look like fools if anyone found out."

Rebecca was given menial duties, things usually reserved for apprentices and guards, and when she argued was threatened by members of the council. She began acting out – pushing the limits of their patience, seeing what she could get away with before they decided to do something drastic. Lane would come up with dangerous schemes that were purposefully meant to get them in trouble, and Rebecca would lie their way out of it. She crossed the line once and was sent to Cressia for a year, which served only to piss her off and make her hate the council more. But when she arrived back in Gilead she had settled to a slow simmer, letting her feelings bubble up on each other, but keeping them just well enough in check that she wouldn't shoot any of the councilmen. It was then that her eyes had truly turned cold and unreadable, and she'd finished her decent into the murderous hatred that consumed her for years.

It was Midsummer Night nine years ago when things had finally come to a boil. Rebecca met the Wolf that night, and the next morning the Harrier, Shane, had shown up in town, sporting illegal guns and beating her in a gunfight in which he cheated. For reasons she didn't go into, she helped the Harrier get out of town, knocking another Gunslinger unconscious in the process before Lane and Ghengis caught up with them outside of town. It started raining, and while taking refuge under a dried up riverbed bank, they spotted a taheen, who opened fire on them.

Rebecca could recognize an opportunity when she saw one, and bringing a taheen to the council could only be a good thing. They took the creature hostage, acquired Shane's sister, Sabrina, and the writer, Stephen, along the way, and she was grinning quite smugly by the time she entered the council chambers, Lane and a taheen in tow. But the council, having heard of her attack against a Gunslinger, wouldn't hear her out and threatened to tell Gilead who she really was. They'd let the townspeople demand she be sent west, and that would be the last they ever heard of her. Rebecca stormed out, grabbed the rest of the new Tet, and began to head down Turtle Path Road towards anywhere that Ka would take her. And the Tet followed silently behind.

"We traveled the worlds for a time," she said as if telling him they'd gone backpacking in the mountains. "And in the final world we came to they made us relinquish our guns. We were attacked by taheens, and one grabbed me and pulled me through the door, which shut behind us. I couldn't get back through, so I started towards the city."

"No wonder you were so surprised when I told you where you were," Jon said with a silent chuckle.

"Aye, I didn't expect to end up in the hands of the man I'd been sworn to kill."

"You didn't though. I could see you contemplating it," he studied her dark face for a moment. "Why didn't you kill him, Sue?"

She shrugged, "what good would it have done? While I don't doubt my ability to kill him, I did doubt my chances of making it back out of town alive. And quite frankly I was curious to see what he was really about and what life here would be like. If it was really worth fighting against… or for."

"I'm glad you didn't shoot him. I think I would have been too terrified of you to shoot you myself." He ran his finger down the side of her face again, "besides, I've grown rather fond of you now. It would be a shame to have never married you."

"Oh you wouldn't have had the chance to shoot me," she said with a wicked grin, "you would have been next."

It sounded like a joke, or an empty threat of the past, but he knew just how serious she was. If she'd killed Farson, and he the only one around to stop her, he would have died before he'd even known the Good Man was dead. It sent a shiver down his spine, as he realized for the second time that night how easily she could have killed him in the past, and that he would have been helpless to stop her.


	9. Chapter 9

Rebecca woke just before dawn, still tired but unable to sleep further; she'd always been an early riser. She slid out of bed and padded barefoot into the main room after checking silently on Becky. The box with the guns was still sitting on the dinning table and she made some hot coffee before sitting down with it and opening the box.

The underside of the cloth had writing on it, in the High Speech so no regular literate idiot could decipher it, and Rebecca smoothed it over the table to read. It was a note from Lane, ever prudent in his efforts to conserve paper, although it wasn't a rare commodity in Thunderclap like it was elsewhere in Mid-world.

_In hopes that these will remind you of who you are and what you have been sworn to do. You weren't the only one who went through hell, but your happiness has always far outweighed everyone else's hasn't it?_

Frowning, she dropped it back in the box and closed the lid. It was true, she had always held herself above him – above everyone. If it had come down to her or Lane, she would have chosen herself. He would have chosen her too; and that's why her decision to continue on her path now had been so painful to him. This time Lane chose himself.

xxxxx

Rebecca knocked on the door, not expecting Lane to be up yet, but surely the Wolf would be. And indeed it was his toothy grin that greeted her as the door opened. "Rebecca! I'm glad to see you!"

She smiled and nodded to him, "Good morning Ghengis. It's good to see you as well." Rebecca meant it - she was glad that it had been the Wolf to answer the door and not Lane. Her stomach was doing flip-flops at the thought of what she was going to say to him. But Lane didn't give her the chance as he came up next to the Wolf and looked her critically up and down.

"You aren't coming with us then," he said at the sight of her skirt and naked hips.

"I am not," she agreed.

Lane ran a hand through his hair and gave an exasperated sigh. "You belong in Gilead, Rebecca."

"I belong here, Lane," she counter, although not angrily. "I belong with my family."

"And what about your family in Gilead? What of your father?"

"He will understand." She shrugged a shoulder. "Tell him that I'm safe; happily married. Tell him about my daughter. He will understand."

"So now I'm to be your messenger?" Lane asked loudly and slammed the doorframe with the heel of his hand. "I'll do no such thing; you can tell him yourself." He reached out and grabbed her into the room, slamming the door behind them.

Rebecca tugged back hard, but he was stronger than he used to be. "Let me go," she growled.

"No." Lane swung her around quickly so she stumbled and fell back on the bed, her wrist still caught painfully in his hand. "You listen to me, sai Baine. You will go back with us, you will tell the Council of Farson's plans, and..."

"I will do no such thing!" Rebecca roared and jumped back up, wrenching her wrist out of his grasp. "You have no right to tell me what to do, Lane Morgan."

Lane squared his shoulders. "I am a Gunslinger of Gilead, Protector of the White, and if you don't come willingly, then I will arrest you as a traitor and take you back by force."

Rebecca's eyes flitted instinctually to his guns, but his hands were already on them, blocking her from either. She looked back up, glaring at him with cold brown eyes. "You have no power here Gunslinger. _I_ am the powerful one here. _I_ am the one with the Red Army at my command. And you will release me to my family or I will see to it that you do not make it out of this city alive. That is not a lie."

"Lane..." Ghengis said reproachfully, but the man put up a hand to stop him.

"You are a traitor to the throne of the Eld, sai Baine."

"Lane, she's your best friend..."

"If you show face in Gilead, be sure I will kill you. Don't come to the White City, Rebecca; your life will be forfeit."

Rebecca faced him evenly, but with tears in her eyes. "Don't go back to Gilead, Lane. Please. Stay away from the city."

"Go."

Rebecca looked to Ghengis, who nodded, disappointed with the outcome but unable to do anything to change it. It was her decision to stay here, and he wouldn't push her if she was truly happy.

"I will." She gave Lane a low and formal curtsy, and with the way she had of gracefully exiting a room when she still had things to say she stepped past the stoic man. She gave Ghengis a small smile before she left, shutting the door quietly behind her. As she walked down the hall she could hear Ghengis roaring angrily at the other man, but Lane stayed silent within her hearing.

xxxxxx

Instead of going straight home, Rebecca walked silently to the blood red castle in the center of town. She made her way through the maze and out into the courtyard where the Red Army trained, taking a seat on one of the red stone benches near the entrance. She was pressing on her temples when Farson, with his strange ability to always know where anyone in Thunderclap was, walked through the door to her right and sat down next to her.

"I hear your friends are in town."

Rebecca ignored him and continued rubbing her temples. She really wasn't in the mood to get into another worthless fight with Farson. She always lost.

"It seems to me," he said and leaned back against the wall, "that we need to decide what to do about them."

Sighing in frustration, Rebecca removed her hands from her temples and dropped them into her lap. "Why do you bother coming to me with these things? You don't listen to me."

Farson chuckled and patted one of her hands with his own. "Quite right. But I do like to know what your thoughts on the matters are, even if I don't take them into consideration."

"What do you want, Farson? I am really not in the mood right now."

"I already told you. I need to decide what to do about these friends of yours. The Gunslinger and the Wolf. They could cause problems for us in the future."

"Of course they will cause problems for us," Rebecca snapped, annoyed with his dancing around the question at hand. Farson wanted to kill them, for obvious reasons. He just liked tormenting her with stupid questions in her opinion. "I'm going to need more than three days."

"Absolutely not," he replied. "The plan has been three days for months now. How could you possibly need more than that?"

"They will be watching for me, Farson. They will be expecting me…"

"Not if they are dead."

Rebecca rounded on him and grabbed him around the neck, pulling his face in close. "You don't touch them. I don't care who you are or who you are working for. You don't touch those two until they are out of Thunderclap."

She pushed him back against the wall and Farson began to laugh, coughing as his trachea opened back up to airflow. When he could speak again, his voice was rasping. "I would advise you not to threaten me, sai Fairmoor."

"I'd advise you the same. You so much as touch them, either of them, and I will kill you, and I will kill your armies, and I will be gone before your King could ever find me."

Farson sat back against the cool red brick of the building and smiled. "I don't doubt you could do the first two, but you cannot stop the Crimson King." He paused for a moment, looking her over. "Three days, sai, and I wont touch your friends. Three days in Gilead, and if you aren't back by the third, then I will take matters into my own hands, and you don't want me to do that."

Rebecca crossed her arms and looked down her nose at him. "It can't be done."

"You said they are ready."

"They're not ready. Not against Gunslingers. Not if I don't get more than three days. I cannot do it in three."

Farson looked out over the field where she had been training the army for the past eight years, teeth clenched and lips pursed. "Three days, sai. Three days. Give my regards to your husband and your beautiful daughter. Quite charming your little girl is. It would be a shame to leave her for too long. She'd miss you."

He stood before Rebecca's eyes finished flashing and walked away. "Three days, Susannah. You've one week to be ready. Your friends are safe to pass through." And then he was gone into the dark hallways.

xxxxx

Three days. She couldn't possibly do what needed to be done in three days. It sounded simple enough – go to Gilead, kill the Council, come back home. The White City would be in chaos without its core group of Gunslingers, and then the Red Army would come down on it like a wave of blood. Even the Gunslingers couldn't stand up to that. But if Lane told the Council, they would be waiting for Robert, and it would be much harder to sneak in. Lane would have them guard the western road, the door that was never guarded because only a handful of people, including themselves, knew about it. He'd have them on the alert, they would be extra careful. If there were so much as a hint that she was in the area they would close the gates of the city and send out a massive manhunt. She'd be dead before she even had the chance…

She'd have to find Ghengis then. Gan, she hated to use him in that way, but Lane would know a lie when he saw it. Ghengis would help her, not because he believed in what she was doing, but only because he believed in her. He wouldn't let them kill her, but she doubted he would sneak her into the city. Unless she had more time! She could go with them now, but there was still one more thing she had to do for the Army, to prepare them. She couldn't afford to go now. It would all be in vain.

What would make them believe her? She'd have to be half-dead already before either of them let her into the city. She'd have to be a non-threat. She needed a good lie.

She could do it, but not in three days.

Rebecca walked home slowly, to get ready for the day's training. At least she'd be able to get out all of this extra anger in practice, and she was going to give them one hell of a practice today. Show them what they were really up against.

She pushed the door to their apartment open tiredly and caught the smell of fresh coffee immediately. It seemed ages since she'd had her coffee this morning and she smiled gratefully as she shut the door behind her.

"I was worried," Jon said as she moved to the table and sat down. Her left the breakfast sizzling on the skillet and came over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders affectionately. He was still a little awkward over her confession, but he was determined not to let it get in the way. She was still Susannah, no matter what names she had gone by before. She was still his wife.

"I'm sorry, I should have left a note." She leaned her head back against him and closed her eyes. "I went to tell Lane goodbye and then had a meeting with Farson."

"And how did that go?" He knew how much she disliked the man, had known long before she told him her history. She always came back from meetings with Farson tense and stressed.

She sighed. "They both went about the same. I'm not honestly sure who I would rather hurt at the moment." No, that was certainly not true. If given the chance, she'd kill Farson. She wouldn't do that to Lane, not yet at least.

She may have to soon.

Tracing a loop around her eyes with his finger, Jon tried to help ease her stress. "Sue," he finally whispered and cupped her face in his hands, "you don't have to go through with it if you don't want to. We can send someone else. The army is trained; you can have your second-in-command take over. You don't have to be part of this anymore."

"I do," she said before she broke down crying and he pulled her out of the chair and sat her down on his lap instead so he could rock her and stroke her hair. It wasn't often that she cried, but when she did he knew it was over something important.

Eventually he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, laid her down and sat on the bed next to her as she hiccupped herself out of the tears. He grabbed a cloth and dunked it in the bowl of cool water next to the bed, then put it over her eyes and forehead and pushed back her hair. "Listen, you rest, I'll tell them you aren't feeling well today and stayed home. Think on it, you don't have to make a decision right away, and they can train on their own for the day. Alright?"

She nodded and gave his hand a squeeze, which he lifted to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. It hadn't dawned on him, even last night after her confession, what she was doing, what she must be feeling. It had taken eight years to overwhelm her, but it was the worst possible time for it to have happened, with the Good Man's cause nearly on the eve of its climax. She had to be well enough to go to Gilead in a week, and after that it wouldn't take long to overthrow the Gunslingers. But if she couldn't do it then they would be lost, because they had so much riding on this one woman.

"Feel better, Sue. I'll be back shortly to check on you."


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: So it's been over a year, hasn't it? Indeed it has, but it turns out that I have had the entire story written for most of that time, I just lost my computer and my handwritten copies. But last night I found all of my handwritten copies! So as soon as I type them up again I will be throwing them up here. We've got some fun in Gilead ahead of us, I hope you enjoy.

* * *

When she woke a few hours later Rebecca felt somewhat better. She pushed the cloth off her face and sat up, still reeling from the morning. She couldn't quit – not now – but she couldn't do what they requested in the time allowed. She would have to take her chances with Farson, because taking chances in Gilead would get her killed and ruin their chances of winning. Jon forgive her, but she would have to put their child in danger. 

With the decision made she grabbed a pair of pants she'd thrown over a chair, wrapped her chest in a length of cloth, and changed into one of Jon's shirts. It was a daily practice close to what she used to do to become Robert, but now the constricted feeling of her chest made her feel nauseous instead of protected. She tied her hair low against the back of her neck and went out to the kitchen to grab the box with the guns. Strapping them on she stood before the bedroom mirror, her look complete. Today the Red Army was going to learn what fighting a true Gunslinger was like.

Throwing a long duster over her guns and a wide-brimmed hat on her head, Rebecca kept her face down, knowing full well that the Army wouldn't be expecting her. She walked through the doorway into the courtyard, flipped back the duster and had the guns in her hands before any of her troops had time to react. As the first shots rang out most of them scattered, seeking shelter from the open field and flying bullets. She didn't hit a single one, but the sound of the big guns was frightening enough to the greener men and women. A small group of seasoned warriors ran forward to attack but she deflected them, using her grips as bludgeons and throwing the men to the ground before she put her pistol to the temple of the final man.

"Stand down," she growled, and he dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender.

The click of a hammer behind her drew a smile, and she un-cocked her own gun and holstered it. "At least one of you knows how to fight," she said as she pushed back her hat and pulled the tie from her hair.

The gun behind her lowered as her second in command realized who she was. "Man Jesus, how did you get those guns? I was going to shoot you."

Rebecca turned with her serpentine smile. "You were going to shoot me? You thought a Gunslinger came to the castle? If I was a 'slinger, sai, you'd all be dead by now."

He laughed nervously and put away his gun, but his eyes landed again on the sandalwood grips that she rested her hands upon. "Where did you get them?" he asked with a nod.

They were in her hands before he could blink, and she turned them curiously in the sunlight, drawn by the familiar feel of them in her hands. She nearly shuddered. "I got them from a Gunslinger named Robert Baine. I stole them." Her voice had a far-away quality to it that seemed very strange for Susannah Fairmoor.

The scared troops were beginning to come out from the safety of the columns and circled around them, trying to hear what she was saying and get a good look at the stuff of legends. A mummer went up within the crowd as they tried to ask each other what she was saying.

"You stole them?" The second smirked as if she were joking, but she stopped his smile with a look.

"I killed Robert Baine. He was my cousin." She looked again at the guns, glinting nearly white as the sun shone off the metal and wood. Then she turned her back on her second and looked out at the curious faces before her.

"These are the guns of Robert Baine, Gunslinger of Gilead, Protector of the White. These guns are no different from your own. They have no innate power, they have only the power of the person wielding them. Shooting this gun does not make you a Gunslinger. Wearing this gun does not make you a Gunslinger. Being the firstborn son of a Gunslinger does not make you a Gunslinger! They have told you these things are true, but they are lies. Your heart is what makes you a Gunslinger, my friends. Your training and your heart. You have received the training of Gunslingers, and soon you will go to battle against mortal men, same as you. They will be carrying these guns, but you will be carrying the future of this world – the freedom of any man or woman to follow whatever path they choose. They go to this battle with beautiful guns and ugly, corrupt souls. You go to this battle with the truth!"

The Red Army cheered.

xxxxx

"You be good for your father, hear me?" There were tears in her eyes as Rebecca gave her daughter a kiss and a long hug before releasing her to the ground. "I love you, Becky," she said and squeezed the little girl's hand before sending her to play. The tears broke free and she watched the blonde head bob out of sight.

'All for her,' Rebecca thought to herself. 'This is no longer about me. I do this for her now.'

Strapping on her guns and hiding them once again under a duster, Rebecca took one last look at the apartment she had been so happy in, made sure the note she'd left was sitting in the open so Jon would see it, and made her way down to the blood-red castle. She couldn't remember a time when she'd been nervous, but this trip was making her so. Rebecca took most situations in stride, weighing the pros and cons and doing what would further her. This trip would likely get her killed. There were no pros for her on this trip, but if it meant a future for her daughter then she would gladly go.

She met Jon and Farson at the castle and could see the look of anxiousness in Jon's eyes. There was a different look to Farson and she was quite sure he was giddy with excitement.

Jon pulled her into a hug before she could even say hello. He was worried too; they had already discussed the problems she would face with Lane back, and he knew her plan for getting into the city. Jon thought it was a bad plan as far as she was concerned, but it would get her in and she could heal after they won. As he let her go he pressed a small dagger into her hand and studied her eyes. "Are you sure you don't want me to go?"

Rebecca smiled, her eyes revealing nothing. "No. Go home and make sure Becky's ok. I'll be fine - I've been playing with the Council my whole life."

The smile he returned was less than sure, but Jon's words were brave. "I will see you when Gilead is ours, then." He gave her one last kiss, nodded to Farson, and turned to make his way back to his empty apartment.

Farson and Rebecca were silent as they walked to the doorway his inner circle used to travel the worlds. Rebecca's plans spun through her head slowly, her mind turning each to taste and try out. There was no point in worrying – either it would work or she would be killed.

They stopped before a red door that looked just like all the others with the exception of the archaic brass doorknob. Well that made sense – the door here had carried a similar handle.

"Any last words to send me on my way?" Rebecca asked with a scowl as he put his hand on the knob.

"Three days. Don't fail."

She gave him a grim smile and rested her hands on her guns for reassurance as he opened the door. From what he had said this should put her a half-day's walk east of Gilead. Half a day there, half a day back, two days inside to do her business. If she was late… well, she had better things to think on then being late.

Stepping past him, she could feel the change in the atmosphere as she crossed the threshold. Rebecca turned back to Farson casually. "One last thing," she said and he raised his eyebrows.

Her gun was up and roaring before he had the chance to so much as widen his eyes in shock, and she pulled the door closed behind her, breaking off the knob so no one could follow. On the other side, Farson's body slid down the wall and lay in a puddle of red carpeting.

xxxxx

_Jonathan,_

_If everything went according to plan Farson is dead and the door is locked. Don't think I've turned my back on you or the fight; I just need more time than he was willing to give me. I'll send someone to open the door when I'm ready. You Will Not Fail. Not this way._

_Give Becky a kiss for me and tell her that I love her. I know I'm not an easy person to live with, and I know you cannot understand many of the things I've done and have yet to do, but thank you for trusting me. I love you both. _

_Susannah/Rebecca_


	11. Chapter 11

As the white walls came in sight – Oh Discordia! To see the beauty of those walls again! – Rebecca knew it was time to do what she dreaded most about this trip. It was the part of her plan that made her a non-threat. With the dagger Jon had given her she decided to do the worst of it first and gave herself a precisely ragged cut across the bridge of her nose, through her eyebrow, and into her hairline. She ripped her clothes, cut across her arms, legs and stomach, and let the blood run free to stain her clothes. With a quick limp that was just real enough to count, Rebecca made her way to the front gate of the white city.

There was a line to get in – the guards were being extra careful with the lurking threat of her about, but none of them had seen her in nearly a decade, and before that it had only been as Robert. With her guns stashed in her bag she looked like a peasant woman who had been attacked.

"Help me please!" She ran to the front of the line, blood dripping from her face. "A man attacked me! He was a gunslinger!"

They ushered her in, asking where he had attacked her and told her to stay put as they shut the gates and went out to find the rogue "gunslinger". Rebecca took the opportunity to wipe her face, press her hand to the wound on her head, and take off toward the castle at the center of the city. If she didn't run into someone she knew on the way she would go straight to her old rooms and see if her father was still alive.

She was only a block away from the castle when she ran into Donald Baine. He looked at her without recognition, the way a gunslinger would always be drawn to blood. It wasn't until she breathed "father" that his eyes changed and he realized who she was.

"Child, is that really you?"

She nodded and he took her into a hug, ignoring the blood that was seeping into his shirt. "Man Jesus, what has happened?" He didn't ask where she had been – he'd obviously talked to Lane already.

"I was attacked," she said simply – the quickest way to make someone believe you was to be short and to the point. Stories gave way to doubt.

"By who?" he asked and held her away from him to look her over. "Never mind. Let's get you cleaned up and then you can tell me."

Rebecca smiled and let him lead her to their rooms, her head down, hand clamped over the cut. She loved her father for not asking questions right away. He cleaned her up, giving her a pair of her old clothes that were now a little too tight. Her nose wouldn't stop bleeding so he put a stitch in it and then sat back to take a good look at her.

"How is your arm?"

Rebecca laughed. "I disappeared ten years ago, show up a bleeding traitor, and you want to know how my arm is?" She shook her head, smiling. "My arm is ok."

He smiled in return. "Lane said you have a daughter?"

"I do." She met his eyes and gave a small smile, even as her heart ached for Becky and Jon.

"I hope she gives you hell."

"She's a perfect angel," she managed to say before she began crying. "I'll never see her again," she whispered and looked down at her scarred hands.

His hands covered hers. "Child, what happened?"

And so she began explaining it to him – that Lane had shown up in Thunderclap, guns and all, and when the town found out who she was (a gunslinger's daughter, she explained; it was no use telling that mob that she had been a gunslinger) they had attacked her. "Jon, my husband, he started it. I was so surprised that I didn't react in time. He gave me this one." She touched her forehead with a silent prayer that Jonathan would forgive her for this lie. "I guess I got the others running away."

Donald nodded and she thought for a moment he was going to call her out on her lie, but he only pushed himself up and shuffled to the stove for hot water. "Well," he spoke, back turned, "I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. I'm not sure you won't meet an angry mob here though. Your friend has everyone on alert for you and your Red Army."

"Not nearly alert enough. The guards are fools; they practically threw me into the city."

Donald looked back at her and smiled. "So then, tell me more about this life of yours in Thunderclap," he said as he brought over two hot cups of tea. Rebecca thanked him and he smiled again at the pleasant change in her mannerisms. The years away hadn't been that bad for her after all.

xxxxx

Excusing herself to her old room to relieve herself, Rebecca just missed Lane's knock on the door.

"They can't find her or her army anywhere near the city. I swear the guards couldn't find their own cocks if they were sucking on them." Lane sunk heavily in the seat Rebecca had just been in and looked at Donald, whose face gave nothing away. "They swear up and down that a woman told them she was attacked by a gunslinger. And now they can't find the woman either. Not to mention explain how she got away from a gunslinger."

Rebecca made her way to her bedroom door, watching the back of Lane's head as he spoke. She felt bad for putting him through this, but not bad enough to stop. Leaning against the doorway as if for support, she hoped she looked convincingly beaten. If not he'd probably finish the job.

"I suppose not all women are as weak as you give them credit for."

"Gandammit," he spat as he recognized her voice and began to turn. "I should have known." He didn't let surprise show in his eyes at the sight of her, but he did take a long, frowning look. "I told you not to return to Gilead."

"I told you the same," she replied and limped over, moving just enough to give the impression of pain.

"Alright," Lane sighed, "let's hear it."

Rebecca snorted, then coughed out the dried blood she'd just inhaled. "I cut myself up so I could come here on a suicide mission to destroy Gilead," she smirked.

"Nice try. What really happened?"

"That's the truth," she said and leaned back in the chair, crossing her arms and wincing.

"I'm not stupid, Rebecca," Lane spat. "There is no way you'd cut yourself, and even less chance you'd come back on a suicide mission. You love yourself too much.

"I am rather fond of me," she said with a laugh.

"So then, what happened?"

She gave him a straight look, trying to stare him down. "I'm not telling you."

"You damn well better or I'll arrest you and let the Council grill you instead."

"You are going to arrest me anyway," she spat back and he moved forward to grab her.

"Lane," Donald said before the other man could get up. His voice was calm, but there was a distinct note of warning it in. Looking at his daughter for permission, she nodded and looked away.

"Her husband did it."

The anger drained from Lane's face as he turned to her. "You let him do this to you? You were a gunslinger!"

"It… I couldn't hurt him," she whispered. "It wasn't just him; it was a whole mob. He dealt the first blow and then they all…" She looked at him finally, pain and pleading in her eyes. "I told you not to wear your guns so openly in town."

"Christ, Becka, I'm sorry." Lane ran a hand through his hair and stood, pacing the room. "So what do you plan to do now? You can't stay in Gilead – they'll kill you."

"They'll kill me if I go back to Thunderclap." Rebecca sighed. "I'm going to go to the Council and tell them everything – all of Farson's plans, where he will attack, how, and when as close as I can figure. Throw myself on their mercy and beg them to let me stay."

"To see you beg would probably be enough." Lane sat down heavily in his chair. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"No." She gave him a small smile, "you had nothing to do with this one. I'll go alone."

xxxxx

The Council chambers were in an uproar by the time Rebecca and Donald arrived. Councilmen were yelling at guards, who were trying to explain how they lost both the girl and the army, pages were furiously recording testimony in the low speech, and Gunslingers were flowing in and out with reports of nothing. No one even looked at her when she first walked in.

A gentle push from her father's hand kept Rebecca moving forward as she slid through the crowd until she was nearly to the long table the council sat at. One of the guards recognized her.

"That's her! That's the woman who was attacked." He pointed and all heads in the room turned her way, silence falling over most of them.

Rebecca's heart thudded deep within her chest as she stood and looked across the row of Councilmen. There were some new faces, but one face had stayed the same. Sai Veriss was still seated in the middle of the table, face swollen with fat, thin hair white and mostly gone, beady little black eyes looking her up and down so she shivered with repulsion. How anyone could call this fat, corrupt man head Gunslinger was beyond her.

"Sai Baine," he said, voice like sandpaper and black oil. Rebecca's heart beat faster at the sound of her old name in his mouth. "I see you have brought the woman. We must thank you for finding her. You are dismissed, I will make sure these incompetent guards don't lose her again."

Rebecca looked quickly back at her father who gave her only the briefest glance before bowing to the Council and stepping back. He may have understood, but he didn't agree. He was going to let his daughter do this on her own.

"Please state your name for the record," Veriss sighed, put out by the events of the day.

Rebecca's brows drew together in an untrusting frown. "Don't you know me, sai?"

"I don't have time to learn the names of every man, woman and child in Gilead. Now what is your damn name, woman?"

Rebecca crossed her arms and scowled. "Oh, you already know me, sai. You know me very well."

It was the contempt in her voice that finally jogged Veriss' memory, and his eyes opened in shock as he recognized the glare under the cuts on her face. "Arrest her," he said as calmly as possible, and when no one moved he stood and screamed it. "Arrest her!"

"No need." Rebecca held up a hand to pause the guards closest to her from grabbing. "I have come of my own accord to give you the secrets of your enemy."

The men looked to Veriss and he sat, waving them off with a hand. "What kind of secrets? Don't waste my time with trivialities."

Rebecca smiled. "I can tell you where they will attack, how, and how many they have. Their weapons, training…"

The fat old gunslinger rubbed his chin in thought – would the trade even be worth keeping her alive? Or should they just kill her and deal with the Good Man's Army when they arrived? Killing her was so tempting. Making her suffer; watching her writhe in pain beneath his hands. She could take the pain, he knew that already, but he would hurt her to a point she'd never forget. He would draw out her death until she begged him – begged him! – to kill her.

"Do you want to know or not?" Rebecca asked, impatient. She had expected him to jump at the opportunity, not sit around mulling it over. What if he said no? She'd still be sitting in the jail cell when the Red Army attacked. At least she'd see Jonathan again. Part of her almost wished Veriss would have her arrested.

Veriss stared at her with a grim face. "Fine. You tell us their secrets and I won't have you killed."

xxxxx

"Sit her down there." Veriss pointed to a chair in the middle of the dark stone room. They were beneath the castle in the prison set aside for traitors. She was quite sure she was in a room normally reserved for torture, but there was no point in torturing someone who was speaking freely. She hoped.

"I'm a big girl now, Veriss; I can sit on my own, thanks." Rebecca gave him a thin smile before the large guard pushed her down into the chair. He cuffed her right wrist to the back before she could get comfortable, and she glared at the head of the Council. "I really don't think that's necessary."

Without a word he ambled over and smacked her hard across the face with the back of his hand, splitting her lip and popping the stitch so blood trickled down her nose.

Rebecca wiped her face with her free hand. "Well, at least the handcuffs make sense now. Do you propose to beat me to death, or would you actually like to know what I have come to tell you?"

"If you are going to tell me regardless, then I'd rather have the pleasure of beating you."

She gave a short laugh. "Sai, I_ was_ a gunslinger. Beat me all you want and I won't say a word. Remove the cuffs and stay your hand and I'll tell you what you want to know."

"You were only a gunslinger because I let you be one." Veriss smirked.

"Oh, I didn't realize you let me beat you at my test, only to stab me afterward." She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Tell me, sai, did you expect me to die of one little knife wound, or were you planning on dishonoring yourself before the Council and half a dozen 'slingers?"

The back of his hand cracked across her face again and Rebecca bit her lip from saying more. Both ends of her nose were freely bleeding, as was her lip, and her right eye was beginning to swell shut. She leaned back and stared the fat man down. "Are you done?"

Veriss sat down in a chair opposite her. "Talk."

"The cuffs."

"The cuffs stay on until you are done."

She almost protested. She almost decided to sit and stare at him until he got sick of her and removed them, but it was more likely that he would kill her, so she swallowed her pride and her hatred and fixed the bright sight of Gilead in her mind. It wouldn't go down without a fight, and she would provide the fight they needed to go down with honor.

"They are twenty thousand strong, with an elite force of four hundred that are just as well trained as your gunslingers. Even if you call back all of your men in time, you will be vastly outnumbered."

"An elite force of four hundred?"

"Four hundred and one, until I left."

Veriss nodded. "I see. So they were going to allow you to fight as part of their 'elite'."

"Sai, I _trained_ their elite. There would be no elite but for me."

He gave her a bland look. "So you admit to treason?"

"I admit to giving others the fair chance I was never granted."

"Come now," he smiled. "I gave you a fair chance, did I not?"

"Your price was much too high," she spat back, glaring as if looks really could kill. "Farson knew what you did; Farson knows all. You'd do better to change your archaic ways and make a deal with them. For all my help you are still going to lose."

"Then why bother coming back? You'll be killed either way; you should have stayed on the winning side, if that's what you believe."

"I finally remembered the face of my father, sai. I suggest you try it sometime. It couldn't be that hard for you – you're corrupt enough to be a child of the Crimson King."

She knew his hand was coming this time and braced herself, but it never hit her. Instead she found herself looking down the barrel of his gun.

"I don't think I care about your secrets anymore, sai Baine. I suggest if you want to see the other side of this moment that you start telling me what I want to know and cut the crap in between. I want to know when, where, and how."

He thumbed back the hammer and she had the brief desire to tell him to shove it up his hairy ass and just shoot her already, but that would take away her pleasure of killing him later. And if she had to suffer through this gan-forsaken trip she was taking him with her.

"A month, at the absolute latest. Jericho Hill. They have guns, all of them, and greater firepower as well. Weapons you have never heard of. They will blow down the walls and pour into the city unless you can take them at the hill."

"Is that all?"

"That's as much as I was privy to, yes."

Veriss stood, un-cocked the gun, and stared down at her broken face for a moment before swinging the gun down at her head, handle first. She tried to get her arm up to block it, but couldn't manage in time. Rebecca blacked out just as pain flowered through her temple.


	12. Chapter 12

Rebecca woke with a scream from a dream of red eyes. She was in her old bed, with a lukewarm rag over her swollen eye and a throbbing pain that began in her temple and webbed its way across her face. But she was alive, and as far as she was concerned that made Veriss a dead man.

The door opened and her father peeked inside. He was anxious, but his face softened when he saw her trying to sit up. "Get some tea," he said over his shoulder before coming in to help prop her up. "I'm glad to see you awake. I was afraid at first he might have killed you."

"You and me both." She accepted the tea Lane brought in, ignoring the temperature of it to take a sip. It stung her lip and burned her tongue, but she felt better.

"You shouldn't have talked back," Lane reprimanded. "You were only there to give information."

"What makes you think I talked back?"

"I grew up with you. You can never just say anything."

She pouted. "Well, I only deserved it the once. He cuffed me to the chair and beat me right away. Might as well make the most of that situation."

"It looks like he certainly did."

Rebecca waved him away like a gnat before catching sight of her arm. There were bruises dark around her wrist and she wondered just what she'd suffered after she'd left the conscious world. Putting her hand under the blanket so the bruises were not in sight she chocked back the tears that were threatening to spill over. Gan, she felt seventeen again, freshly deflowered and stripped of any remaining innocence, forced into consequences that she hadn't seen coming. She wanted to skip this suicidal mission the Good Dead Man had sent her on and go back to her husband and let him tell her it was going to be ok – there would be no war, no one she loved would die, she didn't have to be a beautiful killer anymore. He would smooth away all the pains and her daughter would help her forget with her childish antics and games that Rebecca had never enjoyed as a child. The thought of Becky sent her over the edge and she began to cry for the child she'd never see again.

"Man Jesus, woman, what now?"

"Lane, out!" Donald pointed him toward the door before turning to his daughter, smoothing her hair and shushing her softly.

xxxxx

For three days Rebecca sulked in her apartment, not allowed to leave even if she'd wanted to. The third day saw her anxious and pacing. She couldn't be sure she'd killed Farson, and even if she did that didn't guarantee the safety of her daughter. If someone hurt Becky…there was nothing she could do. She would have to trust Jon to diffuse any bad situations that came about.

"I'm sorry, sai, no one is allowed in to see the traitor."

"I'm not a traitor!" Rebecca yelled through the door. "Let them in!"

She needn't have yelled – when the guards saw who was crouched under the cape they let him in without another word. It wasn't smart to stand in the way of the Wolf.

"Ghengis!" Rebecca smiled as he entered, ducking through the doorway. Her lip pulled uncomfortably where it had split, but she was able to look through both eyes now.

"I heard you were in town; I had to come see for myself that you were really that reckless." He smiled down at her and shook his head. "Lane tried to make good on his promise, eh?"

Rebecca put a hand to her face, "No. Veriss did most of it."

"And the rest?"

She shrugged, "not important. I'm glad to finally see a friendly face."

"Well, you sounded like you needed one." Ghengis smiled, fangs showing in what anyone else would have swore was a threat. He took a seat on the couch, the furniture bending under his weight. "So how are you? Aside the cuts and bruises of course."

"Bored." She sat on the chair next to him, crossing her legs in a lady-like fashion, as opposed to the masculine manner in which she used to sit. "Sore, disappointed, worried, angry – take your pick."

"Not allowed visitors I see."

"Someone might break me out," she smiled, "and we all know how dangerous I can be."

"Quite dangerous; it was probably wise of them."

"Probably," she agreed before looking out the window. "This is worse than before. Gandamn taheen. Fucking Farson."

"He sent the taheen for you didn't he?"

Rebecca nodded, but continued looking out the window.

"Why?"

She finally turned to him. "He said I could make him happy."

"And did you?"

She gave a bitter laugh. "I doubt it. The last time I saw him he looked astonished, perhaps a bit double-crossed."

Ghengis lifted an eyebrow. "You shot him, didn't you? Aubaine would be pleased."

"Fuck Aubaine. Farson threatened Becky."

"Ahhh," Ghengis nodded. "No wonder they attacked you."

"They didn't attack me," she confided. If there was anyone in the world she could tell this truth to it was the Wolf, who had once done the same thing she was doing to change his life for the better. Besides, if she lied he would leave and she was lonely…and the years had certainly been good to the Wolf. He was still handsome as ever beneath that fur coat.

"I left as soon as I shot him – I had to."

"Then who-"

"I did it myself." She looked down and wrapped her hand around her bruised wrist. "I knew I couldn't come back to Gilead whole." They were silent for a moment. "Don't tell Lane."

"I suppose cutting yourself is better than being shot to death…" Ghengis looked her over. "God damn, but you do go to extremes to save your own skin."

Rebecca chuckled, "it's always been a fault of mine."

They lapsed into a silence that stretched on. Finally, Ghengis straightened in his chair.

"What are your intentions here, Rebecca?"

"I've lost everything, Ghengis. I just want to piece my life back together and get on with it."

The Wolf nodded. "Don't do anything to get yourself hurt further, ok? I have to get going."

"I promise I'll try not to." Rebecca smiled and stood, giving him a hug (thank Gan he didn't squeeze her this time) and showing him to the door. They parted and she went back to being lonely and pacing the apartment.

xxxxx

By the end of the week Rebecca was itching to get out of her apartment. Her face had begun to heal; the swelling was down and the bruises were losing their purple hue for a sickly greenish yellow. If it weren't for the stitch in her nose and the cut trailing up from it no one would know she'd been hurt at all. They might even begin to recognize her again if she was ever let out into the world of the living.

She became so desperate that she began talking to the guards, hanging out just inside the doorway and asking for the latest news. No wonder women spent most of their time gossiping in the castle; when there was nothing else to do it passed the time.

"Kelly Sanne finally got engaged," her current guard, a boy barely old enough to be a guard, said.

"That slut? Who would marry her?" Gan, had those words just left her mouth? Ugh.

"Alexander Manx, no surprise there. He's got some interesting tastes as well."

"Now there's a match made in the bawdy house."

The guard laughed, but then stopped himself as Veriss came around the corner. "Uh oh. You better get back inside. We'll both be in trouble."

"Non-sense," Rebecca smiled. "You won't be in trouble. Veriss!" She waved and walked right out the door to him, linking her arm in his elbow.

Veriss continued walking, looking at her sideways. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Getting a breath of fresh air, thank you."

"You keep this shit up and I'll see your head on the block."

"I'd really rather be shot," she gave him a bland smile.

"Traitors don't get that honor," he smiled back.

They had reached the end of the hall and he held the door for her, escorting her down the stairs and into the bright streets below. She didn't know where he was going, but she relished the fresh air and busy streets (although the white buildings were bright to her unaccustomed eyes).

"You know," he said, tone easy, "I could kill you right where we stand and no one would lift a finger to save you." He watched for her reaction out of the corner of his eye, but while she stopped and turned to him her expression was nothing but that same cold contempt he was used to.

"I'm not afraid of you, Veriss. I was, once, but I've been playing with the real bad boys now. You are a peon compared to Farson, and I've got nothing left to lose."

"You've got Lane, and your father. Your Wolf friend…"

Rebecca laughed. "I'd like to see you try to hurt Ghengis. He'd rip you in two. As for Lane, we aren't exactly on friendly terms anymore." She began walking again, tugging him along to keep up. "My father can't be touched by you and you know it. Especially if people were to learn you raped his daughter. Twice now, I believe."

Veriss turned to her, agape and enraged. Before he could say anything, however, she leaned in close and hissed at him. "You just remember I have only my life now, but you… you have so much more to lose. Leave me in peace to live my life and you won't lose it all."

She let go of his arm then and glided over to where Alexander Manx (of the castle gossip, to say true) was walking back toward the white castle. "Thank you for the walk Veriss," she said cheerfully before turning to sai Manx. "Why Alexander! Pleasure to see you here – I just heard that you were engaged."

The two gunslingers walked back, leaving the head of the Council gapping in the street.

xxxxx

"Well, hello," Rebecca smiled pleasantly, "I didn't expect they'd let you in." She hadn't seen Lane since her father kicked him out days ago. It hadn't bothered her – it would be much easier to eventually carry out her plan without Lane's interference.

"I haven't tried yet," he said, shutting the door behind him. "But you seem to have made friends with the guards; he didn't have any problem letting me in."

"Roger's a sweetheart."

"What are you up to?" Lane crossed his arms and glared down at her as she sat on the couch.

"I was bored," she shrugged. "I started talking to the guards. They're good kids; don't always follow instructions, but you can't really fault them that." She offered him and seat and Lane sat facing her. "Besides, if I wanted to leave no guards are going to stop me."

"So why don't you leave then?" Lane leaned back and crossed his arms. He obviously didn't trust her presence in the white city.

She laid down against the arm of the couch. "Where am I going to go? She asked, looking at the ceiling. "I can't go home, I can't just run to some other city and expect to make a new life all over again, I don't know how to use the doorways-"

"That's something I've been wondering about," Lane interrupted. "How did you get here when you can't use the doorways."

"Ka," she replied, propping herself up on her elbows to look at him.

"Bullshit," he shot back.

She shrugged and fell back down. "I ran to the castle when they attacked me – you can easily get lost or hide in it – and I saw a door with the same type of handle as the one the taheen pulled me through. I went through and broke the handle off so they couldn't follow me."

"Stop lying to me Rebecca!" Lane sat forward and gripped the arms of his chair so he wouldn't strangle the truth out of her. "I am so sick or your lies! Always lying, always cheating, always working only for yourself! Could you think of someone else for a change?"

"Like you, Lane?" She crossed her arms behind her head. "What would you like me to do? Leave? I'll leave if that's what you want."

"I don't want you to leave," he sighed, "I just want you to stop lying."

"When have you ever known me to tell the truth?" She smiled. "You'd really not like me if I told you the truth."

"What's the truth?" he asked anyways.

"The truth is that I was happier in Thunderclap, with Jon, than I ever was here with you." She closed her eyes – she couldn't look at him. "The truth is that I haven't wanted to be a gunslinger since I was seventeen. The truth is that gunslingers aren't nearly so squeaky clean as you lie to yourselves that you are. I lie to others, Lane, but you lie to yourself." She opened her eyes and looked at him, "so tell me, Lane. Tell me the truth; what do you really want?"

"You," he said softly, "I've only ever wanted you."

"And you could have had me," she said and closed her eyes – she'd already known his answer, "if you had only stayed that night."

"What night? When the taheen took you?"

"Midsummer," she replied and it hit him like a shot in the chest. The next morning she said she'd been given the chance to test, and he thought he'd done something wrong. They had never spoken of that night again.

Lane leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped before him. "And what if I had stayed that night?"

She pushed the balls of her hands against her eyes. She hadn't thought about that night in a long time, although it had always been in the back of her mind. In Thunderclap she'd been able to push it aside – there was nothing there to remind her. But here, sleeping in the bed where it had happened, having to deal with Veriss, seeing the bruises around her wrists that were finally fading to yellow (it was still sore to the touch – a not so gentle reminder of the councilman); here it couldn't be pushed aside. Here it was at the front of every thought.

Lane pulled one of her hands away, releasing the tears that she'd been trying to hold back. She put her arm over her face to hide her eyes and stayed that way so long, tears running silently down her face, that Lane finally whispered. "Rebecca?"

She took a deep breath. "If you had stayed I wouldn't have answered the door – I thought it was you coming back – I wouldn't have made a deal with the devil, I wouldn't have tested, I wouldn't have become a gunslinger, I wouldn't have been taken to Thunderclap, I wouldn't have met Jon, and I wouldn't be sitting here balling my eyes out over something that happened almost twenty years ago!"

Lane let her cry for a minute before wiping the hair from her face. "Who was at the door?"

"Who do you think?" she growled and lifted her arm from her eyes to glare at him, the yellow bruises visible in the light. "It was Veriss."

Lane stayed with her until she exhausted herself with emotion and fell asleep. He had the notion to find Veriss and shoot the man himself, but that would be suicide. Still, he better not see the councilman anytime soon or he may not be able to stop himself – if Veriss hadn't interfered Lane might have been happily married now, instead of running around unknown worlds for the past decade.

So much made sense now, though; how jumpy she had been the next morning, why she'd become such a cold, impersonal bitch to him, why she hadn't had the urge to return to Gilead. Surely she couldn't have trained the Red Army just to get back at Veriss, but she hadn't felt much remorse about it either. He could understand that now.

Finding Ghengis at the tavern of the Inn he was staying at, Lane sat down next to the Wolf, ordering a double shot of whiskey.

"How is she?" the Wolf asked, bass voice as quiet as he could make it.

"Her face is healing, and she's made friends with the guards."

"That's nice," Ghengis emptied a mug of ale. "Now how is she?"

Lane shrugged and took a gulp of whiskey as the barmaid set it down. "Not happy. You know her – never happy under the best circumstances."

Ghengis snorted. "I don't believe she's ever been in the best circumstances."

Lane could drink to that, and did. When he put his glass down he ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what to do with her."

"I didn't realize_ you _had to do anything? I thought you wanted nothing to do with her…you were going to kill her."

"I wouldn't have killed her and you damn well know it."

"I know that," the Wolf grinned. "If you had tried I would have killed you first."

Lane sighed, "that still leaves us with the problem of what to do with her."

"Ka will work it out; it always does."

"Fuck Ka," Lane drank another whiskey and relished the warm feel of it in his limbs. "Ka would just as soon see her dead as happy."

"You say true, sai," Ghengis nodded, catching the other man's mood. "But how do you make an honest woman of Rebecca? Everyone who has tried so far has failed."

"Or beat her, which I can't honestly blame him for." Lane would have liked to ring her neck more than once.

Ghengis was silent, and Lane lapsed into silence as well to focus on his third drink.


	13. Chapter 13

Lane showed up at her door again the next day, but he was stopped by the guard.

"She'll have no visitors today," the boy said, making his best effort to look intimidating to the hardened gunslinger.

"By order of the Council?"

"By order of herself."

Lane pushed him aside. "Her orders don't apply to me." As the gunslinger opened the door the boy tried to stop him, but Lane shoved him back hard, making the guard fall and hit his head with a loud thunk. The kid didn't move.

Rebecca was sitting on a chair she pulled over to the balcony, staring beyond the walls of the castle, picking at the seam of a teddy bear that had been her mother's. She turned with a scowl when the door opened. "I told Roger not to let anyone in."

"He's asleep." Lane closed the door behind him and walked over to her. "Why no visitors today? I thought you would be begging for them."

"I didn't feel like it." She turned back to the balcony, fingers still picking at the seam.

"What's wrong then?" Lane dragged a chair over and sat next to her, grabbing the bear so she wouldn't pick it apart.

"Hey!"

"You're going to ruin it."

Rebecca glared and grabbed the bear back. She tugged on one ear and pushed in its nose until the button popped back out. "It's Becky's birthday today," she said quietly. "I was trying to figure out a way to get this to her. I don't think there's much trade between Gilead and Thunderclap though." She tried for a smile and failed.

Lane sat back. "I know how to use the doorways, Rebecca. I could take it to her… or bring her here."

Rebecca's heart stopped for a moment. Bring her here? She'd never considered that. Gan but it was tempting, just for the chance to see her again.

"No," she finally said, reluctant to give up the chance. "No. I couldn't take her from Jon."

"Oh yes, Jon who beats women…"

Rebecca ignored him. "Besides, I don't want her to grow up here, with a mother who's a known traitor. That's no life for a girl."

"Traitor or no, she'd be a princess of the finest city in In-World."

"What if she doesn't want to be a princess?" Rebecca was trying very hard to talk herself out of sending Lane to get her daughter.

"What little girl doesn't want to be a princess?" Lane scoffed.

"Me."

"Oh please." He crossed his arms and frowned. "You relished being a princess when you were one. All little girls want to be princesses when they grow up. She'd have a great life here – dresses, dolls, a fine 'slinger husband someday."

"And what if she'd rather be a gunslinger than marry one?"

"Very hard to become a gunslinger in Thunderclap." He looked at her and shook his head. "Honestly, she'd have a better life here."

"I don't believe that."

"And what if he beats her?" Lane leaned forward. "What if your husband decides to forget you, re-marry, and get rid of the girl who reminds him of his traitor wife? What if he beats her like he beat you? What if he kills her?"

"He wouldn't do that," Rebecca whispered.

"He did it to you."

"Stop saying that!" She hugged the bear to her chest and began crying.

"No, I won't. Your husband beat you, Rebecca. He tried to kill you!"

"It wasn't Jon!" she screamed and rocked forward. "It wasn't Jon."

"What do you mean it wasn't Jon?" Lane grabbed her arms and pulled her upright. "Who was it, Rebecca? Who did this to you?"

She looked him in the eye, her own wavering with tears and the truth. "It was me," she moaned softly. "Lane it was me. I thought you were going to kill me."

Lane released her and stood, hands shaking with the effort not to hurt her. He squeezed them into fists and turned his back on her.

"Lane," she said, voice hoarse, "they would have killed me; you would have killed me. What else was I supposed to do?"

"I_ should_ kill you," he growled and turned back to her. "I should kill you and save everyone the trouble of dealing with you."

"I did what you wanted," she argued. "I came back and told the Council of Farson's plans."

"You fucking bitch." Lane's hands were playing at his guns. "You deserve whatever Veriss did to you."

Rebecca snapped, dropped the bear, and lunged at him. He could have pulled and shot her, and no one would have cared otherwise, but he hesitated and she had him against the wall, hand around his throat so his head swam. She'd not lost any of her strength, but he'd become stronger. Using the trick she'd never learned after her night with Veriss he tripped her up and sent her to the ground. He pinned her there and she couldn't get free.

"No one deserves what he did to me!" she cried, and the fight went out of her. "No one deserves that. Not even me."

Lane sighed and sat back, wiped his face and looked at her crying on the ground, her face cut by her own hand, Veriss' bruises fading.

"God damn you, Rebecca." There was nothing else to say about it.

xxxxx

"We should move."

It was two days after Rebecca's explosive confession, and Lane had finally returned. She had been writing a letter (Man Jesus what a waste of paper!) and hid it away when he walked in. He didn't bother asking what it said – quite frankly Lane Morgan was getting sick of the truth.

"Move where?" she humored him.

Lane shrugged. "It doesn't matter. A small town, a cottage on a lake, a different world; I don't care."

But you are a gunslinger," she pointed out. "And gunslingers belong in Gilead."

He snorted. "I don't belong here anymore than you."

Rebecca smiled; what she wouldn't give to leave this all behind. Gilead, Thunderclap, the war. But that would require leaving Jon and Becky – really leaving them, body _and_ spirit – and she couldn't do that, not even to save herself.

"I don't belong anywhere, Lane, moving isn't going to help." She was still smiling, although she realized the truth of the statement. "I'd just as soon be done with it all and in the clearing. My path is completely fucked up."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth."

Lane looked at her. "I like you much better when you lie."

"I told you that you would." She returned his look with a smile. Despite what was bearing down on her she felt better than she had in a long time. Lane may hate hearing it, but getting the truth off her chest, especially after all these years, had lifted her spirits.

"So then," she leaned back in her chair and looked at him. "Which of the worlds would you have stayed in? Shane's America? Ghengis' Territories? Or one of the others?"

Lane was silent as he thought, searching back through the many worlds he'd travelled with the dwindling Tet. "Not America or the Territories. Maybe… there was a little café we visited in one world – the door led in and the door led out, I've no idea what was else was in that world – but I think I would visit there again."

"A café? Sounds nice."

"It was." That world-less café had been a bright spot in a decade of cold, lost loneliness. It had been warm and welcoming, and no one had given them looks like they didn't belong. It wouldn't surprise Lane if all the others there had been world-travelers too. If there was one place he would like to return, that would be it.

"What a waste," he said aloud.

Rebecca looked up at him. "A waste of what?"

"Of life." He stared out the window. "I've not done anything with my life except travel the worlds with a Wolf. I have no friends, no family of my own, my father doesn't speak to me…"

"You're a Gunslinger. That's an accomplishment."

Lane shrugged. "I'm not treated as one."

Rebecca chuckled in response. "Welcome, Lane, to my life since I was nine."

He looked at her and nodded after a moment. He understood. "But at least you had a family."

"Who I'll never see again."

"And a father who loves you," he finished. She couldn't argue that.

"You should go talk to him," she finally said. "I think he'd be proud of who you've become."

"Maybe." Lane shrugged the suggestion off.

"He would be," she replied with her infinite wisdom of parenthood. "You are a good, honest gunslinger, Lane Morgan. One of the few."

He smiled and reached out to squeeze her hand. It meant more coming from Rebecca than it would ever mean coming from his father. He didn't love his father anymore than the old 'slinger loved him. Rebecca was to Lane what the guns had been to her.

xxxxx

Lane visited once more before Midsummer, to tell Rebecca that he'd talked the Council into letting her attend.

"After all," he reasoned, "it's not like you're going to commit any acts of treason during the Festival, in front of everybody."

Rebecca smirked. "Probably not."

"Well, you can't, there will be a room full of slingers to keep you from it."

"I'm not going to go. I'm not in much of a festival mood, and I hate Midsummer."

"I thought it was your favorite?"

"It was, before… it's not," she finished. "In any case, I don't feel like going just to be the center of gossip."

"Rebecca, you have to get on with your life. They won't have you locked up forever; you need to at least pretend to be normal if you ever want to get out of this room."

She shrugged. "I don't care if they let me out."

"Liar."

Giving him a bland look she continued. "They have never trusted me, they will never trust me. I never led a normal life here, and I don't feel like going out in a dress and smiling and pretending like everything is fine. It's not."

"It would be, if you'd let it."

"No, Lane. It won't." She turned to him with a glare. "I have lost my husband, I have lost my daughter, I've lost my home and all my possessions. And more than that I've lost my ability – my _right_ – to be who I am and do what I'm good at."

Lane frowned. "You're a good dancer. You're going to Midsummer."

"You idiot," she spat and turned away. "I really hate you."

"No you don't."

"I do. I hate you more than almost anyone in the world. Except Veriss… and Farson."

* * *

A/N: Sorry for all the chatting and little action in the last two chapters. I promise the next one will be much more exciting and bloody. I think you'll like it. 


	14. Chapter 14

"Dance with me?"

Rebecca turned a wry grin to Lane at his question. "I don't know that I'm allowed. I might have a gun hiding in my dress."

"In a bodice that tight? I doubt it." Lane winked and she smiled in spite of herself. "Besides, I'm sure I can keep you from killing anyone tonight – I'm a faster draw."

"Are you then?" She looked away coquettishly before turning back to meet his gaze. "Alright. Let's dance."

Dancing. Now that had been something she had missed greatly in Thunderclap. Susannah had been known for her talents with guns and knives, for her ability to plan strategic attacks, and for her uncanny knowledge of gunslingers and Gilead. Rebecca, on the other hand, was known better for her ability to charge a room with emotion, her talent for turning every male head in her direction, and the way she moved her body. She had missed being Rebecca more than she thought.

"What?" Lane asked at her inward smile. He liked her secret looks even less now.

She laughed softly. "Jon can't dance; he's got two left feet." The gunslinger stiffened and she squeezed his shoulder, speaking quietly. "Eight years, Lane. It's hard to let go."

"And how long did it take for you to let go of me?" His voice was cold and hard.

The truth was that she had let go of him the morning after her seventeenth Midsummer, but she wouldn't tell him that. "It took a great deal to let go of you," she whispered before looking away. The song changed and she released his hand. She could feel the eyes of the gunslingers on her – judging, watching for some trick, appreciating the tightness of her bodice. She started to turn and caught Veriss' eye, and a shiver ran through her at the memory of previous Midsummer Festivals.

"I think I better go back to my room."

"I'll walk you."

"I don't think that's a good idea…" she trailed off and turned to find her father.

Lane caught her by the arm. "Rebecca, please. Let me walk you home."

_It's not home_, she thought desperately. She wanted to go home – to return to the dissonant red, the scattered eyes, her husband and her daughter. She wanted to crawl into bed next to Jonathan and let him put his arms around her and pull her in until they were breathing as one. Did he believe her letter? Had the Crimson King made good on Farson's promise and hurt her daughter? The noise and bright colors of the festival were suddenly too much for Rebecca.

"I need to go. I need to go now." She clenched her skirt in her hands. Trying to gain as little attention as possible, Lane grabbed her elbow and directed her out to the courtyard beyond the reach of the light and noise.

"I can't do this."

"Calm down-"

"I can't do this," she rounded on him.

"Do what?"

"This! Dancing and laughing and pretending that I don't miss them, and I'm not worried about Becky, and I don't mind being chaperoned and constantly under that man's gaze. I can't do this anymore, Lane." She took gulping breaths of cool air to settle herself. "I can't be Rebecca any longer."

"Who do you want to be then?" he snapped back. "A woman who turned her back on her friends and family? A woman whose husband tried to kill her? You want to be Farson's puppet?"

"Farson's dead, Lane."

The gunslinger stopped short and glared at her with distrust. "What do you mean, Farson's dead? How?"

"I shot him." She closed her eyes and could see the surprised, betrayed look that he last gave her before he died. "That's why… that's why they tried to kill me. That's why I had to come back. Jon opened the door for me."

"Farson's dead."

Rebecca nodded and opened her eyes.

"You killed him?" Lane paused to search her eyes, but from what he could tell she wasn't lying. "Why didn't you tell anyone before this?"

She smiled. "It seems a bit unbelievable, ye ken? Especially considering the source."

"You swear it's the truth?" She nodded. "You swear it on your daughter's head?"

"I killed Farson, Lane. I swear it on Becky's head – on her life. I swear it on the face of my father. He's dead. I was good on my promise to Aubaine."

"It only took you eight years," he mumbled, and she clenched her fists in an effort not to hurt him. She walked away a few paces, pressing her fingers to the stitched bridge of her nose where a sharp headache was beginning. Her other hand ran down her hip in an unconscious effort to reach for her gun.

"It's always been easier for me to be someone else. Robert, Susannah – anyone but Rebecca."

"It can't be that hard to be yourself. I do it every day."

Rebecca shot him a sideways glare and Lane ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Rebecca, you know I didn't have a problem with you being a gunslinger. Why could you never be content with that?"

"Because, you and my father were the only ones. Yes, I wanted the guns, but there were so many other things I wanted too." She shrugged and sat down on the grass, her skirts spreading out around her like a rose. She pushed them down with distaste, pressing the air pockets flat with her palm. "I've always been told I couldn't have everything I wanted until I got to Thunderclap. Have you ever been denied something you wanted so bad that you would do nearly anything to get it? Have you ever committed the most base and demeaning acts for a taste – just a chance – of that thing? And then have it denied to you, despite all of your work, despite all that you deserve it?"

"I've had some experience with it, yes," Lane replied and sat down before her.

"And then imagine being given it all. All. Whatever strings attached. Would you take it?" She looked up into his brown eyes, her own pleading with him to understand, and he thought silently for a moment before he replied.

"Aye, I might," he admitted. "Depending on the strings, I might just."

"Those strings looked so much smaller when I was far away for so long."

Rebecca put her head in her hands. The longer she stayed in Gilead the smaller the strings she held to Thunderclap got as well. She needed to move soon or she wouldn't be able to do it at all. Tonight then. A good portion of the castle was drunk – if she could get out of her room without exciting alarm she would do it tonight.

"Lane?" she said quietly, ready to condemn them both. He looked up – he had been in a world of his own thoughts as well. "Could I…could I stay with you tonight?" she asked. "I've been lonely. I just want to be near someone who doesn't hate me tonight."

He almost asked her what gave her the idea that he didn't hate her, but the look on her face stopped him. She looked distressed, almost frightened. It was a look he had never seen on her.

"Of course, Becka."

xxxxx

They went up the back way to avoid the guards, and Lane led her to his room. There was something wrong, he thought. Something gnawing at him about her attitude. She'd been acting strange since her return, say true, but there was a different intensity to it tonight, and he was worried she was planning something. At least she couldn't do anything with him present, he reasoned.

It took a lot of effort on Rebecca's part to remain calm as Lane locked the door behind them. Her stomach was in knots – she wanted to run, to go back to Jon and Becky and forget this whole thing. But she couldn't go back – she had killed Farson, and she really would be attacked if she returned. They would kill her.

"Rebecca."

She jumped at his touch and chided herself. Lane let go, unsure, before walking through the main room and into the bedroom. He lit a candle and turned back to invite her in, but she stopped as she walked through the doorway. Some part of her looked so vulnerable. It was a strange sight for his eyes, accustomed to seeing only willful defiance in her.

"Are you ok?"

"It should have been you," she said and started forward, the vulnerability hardening in her eyes to something else.

"To go through the door?" he asked, swallowing the urge to back away from her. She was dangerous – he knew exactly how dangerous she was. She only did things to serve her own purposes, but he didn't want to back down.

She stopped before him and looked up, and her eyes softened. "It should have been you who married me," she whispered and reached up to kiss him.

Lane's mind whirled. It was a trick – it had to be a trick. They could have never… she would never… the Wolf… the guns. This wasn't Rebecca. She was playing someone else just like she had said. It was a trick.

She pressed herself on him and kissed him harder, and all of his resolve left him. He was pressing back with the need of years. She had been his first, and he had always wanted her again, but she had shut herself off and hadn't begun to open up again until Ghengis arrived. Lane had been so jealous, had coveted her more, had hated the Wolf with a passion that rivaled his love of the woman they both wanted. And then she disappeared through the door. All those years he knew she was alive. She had to be – Rebecca wouldn't go down without taking the whole Gan-damned world with her.

He wanted her. He had to have her now. He could not be slow and gentle like he had always planned – he would take her and get fifteen years of tension and want and need out of her. Lane's hands became rough, his kisses hard, and he felt her draw away in scared surprise before she gave it back just as hard. They beat each other in their love. Inflicted wounds, drew blood, tried to hurt each other as much as they had each been hurt. And by the end they had released all of their hurt and resentment and collapsed side by side on the bed. Lane slept hard, content in the act and without anymore premonitions of her trickery.

xxxxx

Rebecca dozed for an hour, but woke when the castle was finally silent. The party was over, the drunks were in bed, and it was the hour of her revenge.

Slipping out of bed so she wouldn't wake Lane, Rebecca dressed quickly in his clothes. She tied her hair back in a low ponytail and strapped on his guns. She wanted to use her own guns, but they had been locked away. The last thing Rebecca grabbed was his dagger – the one he had gotten from the Mani before they started their travels, the one that proclaimed him a surviving member of the Tet of the Blade. Rebecca had been given one too, but it was in Thunderclap with Jon.

The hallways were empty. Rebecca made her way to the nearest councilman's door and checked the knob: unlocked. Most of the doors would be, unless one didn't want to be caught in bed with the wrong person. Without a sound, she crept into the apartment and the bedroom. The first councilman was sleeping with his wife next to him. Both snored lightly and the smell of alcohol permeated the room – they were passed out.

She took a long look at the man, who hadn't been a councilman during her apprenticeship, and felt a wave of pity for him. He would pay for the sins of others. Stealing herself to the task, she pressed her hand to his mouth and pushed the knife into his throat. His eyes flew open and he tried to scream but she cut off his air with a swift movement. His drunk wife mumbled and turned over – her hangover would be the least of her concerns tomorrow.

The councilman passed quickly, never knowing who killed him. Rebecca dispatched the others just as efficiently as she made her bloody way through the castle. And then there was only Veriss remaining.

Veriss. She shivered in anticipation as she made her way to his room. He would be either alone or with a whore. If it was a whore, Rebecca would kindly point her to the door, but Veriss would be the only one who would not be asleep when he died. She was going to make him suffer.

Locking the door behind her, Rebecca slunk into the room where the fat man snored loudly. It was obvious by the thick scent of cheap perfume that a whore had been there, but she had left. Veriss was asleep, naked, and Rebecca had to hold back a feeling of sickness as she remembered the last time she had seen his body. The memory heightened her resolve and hatred.

"Wake up you fat fuck," she said as she pointed the gun at his face. "And don't you say one fucking word."

Veriss snorted and wiped the drool off his mouth as he woke. He hadn't heard what she said, but jumped and covered himself when he saw the gun and the dark figure behind it. It was a left-handed gun. Shit.

"What-"

She brought the gun down across his jaw with a satisfying crack. He gave a high pitched scream and clutched his broken jaw, his eyes flashing as he looked up at her.

"It's my turn, Veriss." She cooed down at him, gun trained on his temple. "It's my turn to have the power, the control over you. It's my turn to beat you into submission. At the end I will give you what you want most; and by the time I get done you will want nothing more than the black hand of death to carry you to the clearing."

He backed away, holding his smashed jaw, and managed to get out one mangled word. "Traitor."

"No, sai. _You_ are the traitor. You have betrayed every honorable thing that the guns stand for. You have betrayed me and my father. You are the one who started this and now I will finish it. Gilead will fall to my hand, because you have corrupted its soul."

The fat man tried to scream – to alert someone of the danger – but they were all asleep and he had the largest rooms in the castle, apart from all the others.

"Now, now, Veriss. Don't wear yourself out before I've even started."

Rebecca took the dagger from her belt and turned it in her hand so the reflection of the moon flashed in the gunslinger's eyes. He jumped off the bed, no longer caring if he was nude but trying to get away from the mad woman. Where were her guards? How did she get a pair of guns? Why wasn't anyone coming to help him?

She took her time stalking him, relishing the smell of fear, the desperate look in his eye. And when she finally cornered him the beast that he had created in her was released and she mutilated him, and listened to him scream through his broken jaw.

Every injury she had ever sustained was transferred to him. Every pain, every cut, every bruise. She stabbed him in the back where he had stabbed her. She broke his wrist, slashed at his collarbone, beat his head with her fist so he would feel the pain but not pass out. She cut his face, his torso, his limbs. She beat him until his skin was black and blue and bloody. And when he lay bleeding at her feet, his face almost unrecognizable, she castrated him, and he had no energy left to scream.

"Beg me," she hissed. "Beg me to stop. Beg me to kill you now, swiftly, with a big gun. Beg me with whatever you have left."

One eye, half swollen, turned to her and pleaded silently while a whimper died in his throat. It was all he had left. He begged her to make it stop.

Rebecca stuck a hand in his blood and drew the Eye of the Crimson King on the wall, staring down at him.

"Gilead will fall," she said as she turned and pointed the gun at him. "I give you up to the Tower and the King."

The rapport of the gun was heard through the castle – waking drunk gunslingers and the wives of dead and bloodied men. The perfect white walls of the castle had been smeared red with the blood of the protectors of the White, and the women began to scream.

Lane jerked awake at the sound of the gun and put his arm out to find the bed empty. Dread filled him as his hand hit the mattress. "Man Jesus, Rebecca, what have you done?"


	15. Chapter 15

The sound of screaming women woke Rebecca from her twisted state and she holstered the gun while she looked over the body of Veriss dispassionately. He deserved it, but the sight of what she'd done made her vaguely queasy. She grabbed the knife and wiped the blood on his sheets, then heard the voices and footsteps down the hall. Someone would come looking for Veriss soon – she had to get out. Moving into the dark courtyard, Rebecca made her way quickly through the streets of Gilead and out the west gate.

Xxxxx

Lane's dread turned to anger as he realized she'd taken not only his clothes and dagger, but also his guns. She had used him as a means of escape, and stolen his things to commit her treason. If she was caught, they would both die.

He threw on a pair of pants and a shirt and opened the door to see what was happening. Women were screaming and sobbing, and gunslingers were running back and forth through the halls, trying to find someone with the authority to handle the situation. But everyone in authority was dead.

"What's happened?" Lane grabbed a 'slinger as he ran by.

The man stopped, wavered a little on drunk feet, and then focused on Lane. "The Council is dead. All of them. Throats slit."

"And Veriss?"

The 'slinger shrugged. "His door is locked. They are trying to open it now. I doubt he's alive."

"I can promise you he's not." Lane nodded and released the man. There was more commotion from down the hall as Veriss' door gave way and the scene inside was revealed. Even battle-honed gunslingers found it disturbing. And then someone thought to check on the woman being held under house arrest. A new uproar began as they found her room empty and started the search. Lane shut his door, hid her dress, and joined in the hunt, knowing just where to look for her.

Rebecca was standing in their clearing, arms crossed, back against a tree. The guns and dagger were at her feet, and her eyes held no remorse for what she had done.

"Rebecca-"

"I knew you'd come."

"Why are you still here?"

She smiled that serpent-like smile of hers and it chilled him to the bone. "I'm sorry I had to use your guns, Lane. I would have preferred my own, but I don't know where they are."

"You have to leave_ now_. They are going to kill you."

"I deserve it, don't I?" She gave him a straight look, calm as could be. "I'm a traitor. A monster. Worse than a Wolf. Worse than Veriss."

"Stop!" Lane wanted her to just shut up and go. For all the trouble she had caused him he still did not want to see her die. Not like this. "Do you realize what you've done? For revenge?"

"It has nothing to do with revenge. I've started a war. Farson sent me to kill the Council and throw Gilead into chaos. I've done a fine job. Too bad Farson's dead."

Lane was shocked. Not because it had been a trick – he'd known that deep in his heart all along – but because she wasn't trying to save herself. She was content to stand by this tree until they found her, and then she would plead guilty to treason. They would behead her and Lane would watch the woman he'd devoted most of his life to die a traitor's death.

"Rebecca, please," he pleaded. "Leave now. They are going to kill you."

Her eyes changed – became less distant. "If not me, then who? If they couldn't find me they would still have to kill someone for my crimes."

"So. Let them find a petty criminal to execute."

"Lane," she chided. "If it's not me, it will be you. It was your guns, your dagger. You were the last person seen with me. Always stood by me, no matter what." She reached up and touched his face. "My constant Lane."

"Rebecca." His voice broke as he reached up to press her hand to his cheek.

She smiled. "You almost had me, Lane. I wasn't lying when I said it should have been you. I loved you once." She leaned forward and kissed him, then let him go and walked away, back toward the white gates of the city she had once fought for. Lane couldn't follow. He watched her walk to her death.

Xxxxx

"Rebecca Baine, daughter of Donald, you have been brought before the people of Gilead to stand judgment for treason. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty."

Lane stood next to the Wolf, at the back of the ranks of gunslingers, watching this mock-trial with a sick stomach and an aching heart. Rebecca had marched right back into the city, was arrested, and sentenced to the death of a traitor the next morning. They were on the front steps of the castle now, with the whole of Gilead crowded into the square before them to witness the death of the woman who had sent the city into chaos.

"You have killed the members of the High Council of Gunslingers. How do you plead?"

"Guilty."

"Do you have any last words?"

"I do."

The man nodded her forward and she faced the crowd, kneeled before the block, and smiled. Even at her death Rebecca had a flair for the dramatic. She looked over the crowd, steadied herself, and spoke in a clear, loud voice."

"I am Rebecca Baine, a Gilead Princess, but you knew me as Robert Baine, Gunslinger and protector of the White." Rebecca's eyes swept the faces of the gunslingers before her as their surprise showed. "I have been on both sides of this war, and I did what I did to give the people of Gilead the same chance that I had to fight for. You are not the only ones who can shoot guns and kill men. You are no better than the men and women who live and work under you. Veriss and his Council have corrupted this city and before it can be clean again I will wash it in blood. I will be remembered forever, like the Eld. Infamous on one side, a hero on the other. And I did it without breeding a whole army of whore's children."

She dropped her head to the block and stretched out her arms – the signal that she was ready – and before the crowd had time to absorb her words and what they meant the axe came down and severed Rebecca's head from her body.

A large paw gripped Lane's shoulder. "My condolences, gunslinger." The Wolf left the city that night to continue travelling the worlds. He could not side with either of his friends.

The Gunslingers of Gilead put Rebecca's head on the front gate to deter any other would-be traitors and spies. Her body was thrown to the wolves. The city scrambled to elect a new council and put down the unruly folk who took the opportunity to cause trouble.

That night, Lane got drunk and spent the night with a whore. The next afternoon he too was looking for a door between the worlds, a box tucked under his arm and a letter a with a ring tucked into his pocket. She hadn't been wasting paper after all.

Xxxxx

_Lane,_

_I know I wasn't the only one who went through hell for all those years. I know I never thought of you, and I know that what I ask now is a heavy request. In my closet is a box with the bear from my mother. Please see that Becky gets it – it will be something for her to remember her mother by. There is also a gold ring – send it with the bear please, Jon deserves it back._

_I know that you expected me to leave, to save my own skin, but even I can't live with the knowledge of what I will have to do to finish this. I can't live with a lot of the things I've done any longer. I can't walk down the streets of Gilead with Becky's hand in mine and take her to the river and bring her back to my rooms knowing that my father is gone, and you are gone, and those few who were my friends are dead and gone, at my doing. How can I take her to the Inn for supper and face Sai Morris, knowing that I'm a traitor, and worse – knowing that he sees me as a traitor? How can I watch them paint the white city red and call it their own, much as I think they have the right to take it?_

_I can't watch you die by their hands, and I'm sorry you will have to watch them do the same to me. But my happiness has always far outweighed everyone else's, as you well know. _

_You've always been stronger than me._

_Rebecca_


	16. Chapter 16

It had been two weeks since Farson's death and Susannah's disappearance, and despite Jon's knowledge that she hadn't deserted the cause he was losing hope that he would see her again. Every day Becky asked when mommy was coming home, and every day he assured her it would be soon, but this morning he'd only been able to say 'I don't know'.

When he heard the knock on the door his heart skipped a beat, but Sue wouldn't knock. Jon opened the door and immediately stepped back in shock. "Hello, Lane."

"Jonathan." Lane nodded, his face void of emotion, but his red eyes giving it away despite his efforts.

"Come in." Jon opened the door further and stepped out of the way. The sinking feeling in his stomach was getting deeper as he saw the box in Lane's hands. The 'slinger also wasn't wearing his guns. Something was not right. "Would you like something to eat? Drink?"

"Whiskey?"

"Scotch?"

"That'll be fine." The gunslinger looked like he needed a good, stiff drink.

Jon poured them both a short glass and they sat at the table. When Lane downed his Jon did the same, expecting his nerves would appreciate it.

After the initial warm sensation receded, Lane pushed the box forward on the table. "A gift, for your daughter. I hear it was her birthday a week back."

Jon nodded and peered inside the box to find an old, beaten teddy bear.

"It was Rebecca's. A gift from a mother she never knew."

Jon didn't like the way he said that, but thanked him before getting to the point. "Sue? Rebecca, I mean? She's… is she…"

"She was executed yesterday afternoon for the deaths of the Council of Gunslingers."

"Executed," Jon breathed the word, squeezing his knees with his hands. "Executed," he said again, trying to marry his wife with the word. She shouldn't have been caught. She was a gunslinger, for Gan's sake. But so were they.

"How did they catch her?" he finally asked.

"She let them." Lane's voice was steady; he'd already done all of his crying. It wasn't the first of his friends he'd watched reach the end of the their path. "She could have been out and gone before they caught her, but she stayed on purpose. There was a lot more going on between her and the Council than anyone ever knew. Veriss…" Lane shook his head. "She didn't want to live with it anymore."

"Man Jesus, Sue." Jon rubbed his face with a hand. He refused to break down in front of this man; brother, friend, lover, whoever he had been to her. "So the Council is dead, and so is Farson, and she was a traitor to us both. Christ."

Lane smiled. "Aye, that's Becka. Traitor to everyone but herself. She sold her soul for the guns and then sold it again to spite the first act."

Lane was quite familiar with this side of Rebecca, but Jon had only ever known Susannah, his wife, and he couldn't understand what he was hearing.

"Would another suit ya?" He asked, nodding to the empty glasses.

"Suit me just fine," Lane replied and sat back. If circumstances were different he could see himself as good friends with this man who Rebecca had grown to love. Indeed, Lane couldn't blame him for falling in love with her. She was a lying, deceiving, self-serving bitch, but there was a spark of life in her that no other woman had, and it was easy to be drawn in.

The gunslinger took the second glass gratefully and downed it before standing. Reaching into his pocket, Lane removed a ring and set it on the table. "She asked me to see that you got this back," he said. "I'm glad you made her happy for a little while."

Jon stood and shook his hand, the ring glistening in the side of his vision. "I will see you then. Good luck."

Lane smirked. "Good luck to you."

They parted ways with the knowledge that they would see each other soon, on the opposite sides of a gun.

xxxxx

The Red Army and the White met on opposite sides of Jericho Hill outside the city. The Gunslingers shot from the cliffs, but they were outnumbered by the men and women in red: Rebecca's Army. She had given each side the best she'd had, and now it would be up to Ka to settle the rest.

Donald Baine was one of the first to fall to his daughter's army. There was no resentment as he reached the clearing at the end of his path, only the wish that he could remember the face of his father in his final moments and do him proud.

Lane Morgan, and any who survived the cliffs, made a final, desperate charge onto the Red Army, knowing the cause was lost but not allowing the shame of living through the massacre. Lane was hit with an unknown bullet, and as he fell he saw Rebecca's face instead of his father's. His blood bloomed red against the white rocks of the hill. 

Gilead fell to the newly-appointed Good Man, Jonathan Fairmoor.

xxxxx

Swarms of men – red and white – crowded through the roses at the base of the black, imposing Tower. They walked the stairs single-file, each seeing their own memories in the open doorways, each picking a door to walk through.

Lane watched as his life passed him by and continued walking. He almost opened the door that showed him the memory of the café', but looked up at the dwindling staircase, only a few souls continuing beyond him. He followed them, passed as they opened doors, climbed up the last thin steps and saw a door at the top. There was a girl facing it, her body just beginning to bloom into womanhood. She turned and smiled as he stopped.

"You're going to like this one, Laney-boy. You'll call it your 'beautiful world'." Rebecca took his hand and led him through the doorway to a bright, early summer day by the river where she ran ahead and splashed in.

* * *

A/N: That's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed it. If you're interested in that "beautiful world" mentioned at the end, let me know. It's not fanfiction anylonger (or, at least not directly) so I can't post it here, but there's a whole 'nother book-worth of Rebecca, Lane, and Jonathan. And Veriss, of course. You can't have a good Rebecca Story without Veriss. Ciao! 


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